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

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Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.
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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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Now I can look at you in peace I don't eat you any more.
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Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
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God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
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The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
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Evil is whatever distracts.
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If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibilityyet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility.
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All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
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Writing [is] a form of prayer.
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For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word.
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Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.
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There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.
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I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
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This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.
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Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.
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In argument similes are like songs in love they describe much, but prove nothing.
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The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.
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But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.
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