Quote

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.

Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka
Age: 41 †
Born: 1883
Born: July 3
Died: 1924
Died: July 3
Aphorist
Claims Adjuster
Diarist
Fabulist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Praha
FrantiĊĦek Kafka
Kafka
Throw
Harmony
Elements
Arms
Second
Signify
Firsts
Drowning
First
Strife
Men
Ecstasy

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So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
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Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.
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There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.
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My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.
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Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.
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It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.
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Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
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I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more
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Officials are highly educated but one-sided in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him ... he won't understand a word of it.
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The true way goes over a line that, rather than spanning heights, is hardly above the ground. It appears more decidedly to make one trip than to be walked along.
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One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.
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The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
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This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
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You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.
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Now I can look at you in peace I don't eat you any more.
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He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.
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I am more uncertain than I ever was I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.
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