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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.

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
František Kafka
Kafka
Free
Edge
Earth
Chains
Enough
Edges
Long
Secure
World
Access
Parts
Swept
Allow
Chain
Citizens
Citizen

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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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Evil is whatever distracts.
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His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.
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Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing but from their silence, certainly never.
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The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination.
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So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
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Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
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. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.
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There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
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Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
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If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
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I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
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Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle - maybe there is none.
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The more horses you yoke the quicker everything will go - not the rending of the block from its foundation, which is impossible, but the snapping of the traces and with that the gay and empty journey.
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He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
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The Fathers of the Church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid, because the desert is in our hearts.
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We are separated from God on two sides the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.
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Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
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If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
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Because of impatience we were driven out [of Paradise] because of impatience we cannot return.
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