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And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.

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
Learn
Gentlemen
Hands
Gentleman
Way
Desperate
Resistance
Learned
Lash
Stand
Lashes
Least
Whip
Hand
Whips

More quotes by Franz Kafka

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Evil is whatever distracts.
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Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.
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The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.
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If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o'clock.
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There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.
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There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.
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Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction--that would not be anything to be deplored--but a weakness of conviction.
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The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.
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There will be no proof that I ever was a writer.
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I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
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I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.
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The founder brought the laws from the lawgiver the faithful are meant to announce the laws to the lawgiver.
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German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.
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Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.
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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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Evil is the radiation of the human consciousness in certain transitional positions. It is not actually the sensual world that is amere appearance what is so is the evil of it, which, admittedly, is what constitutes the sensual world in our eyes.
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The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.
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He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.
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They did not know what we can now guess at, contemplating the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it appears in ordinary existence.
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There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
Franz Kafka