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Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

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
Intense
Follow
Hate
Mercilessly
Obsessions
Obsession

More quotes by Franz Kafka

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If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
Franz Kafka
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I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
Franz Kafka
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Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.
Franz Kafka
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We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.
Franz Kafka
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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Psychology is the description of the reflection of the terrestial world in the heavenly plane, or, more correctly, the description of a reflection such as we, soaked as we are in our terrestial nature, imagine it, for no reflection actually occurs, only we see earth wherever we turn.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.
Franz Kafka
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It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.
Franz Kafka
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The Diabolical sometimes assumes the aspect of the Good, or even embodies itself completely in its form. If this remains concealedfrom me, I am of course defeated, for this Good is more tempting than the genuine Good.
Franz Kafka
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I am more uncertain than I ever was I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.
Franz Kafka
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Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.
Franz Kafka
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It is strange how little sharpsightedness women possess they only notice whether they please, then whether they arouse pity, and finally, whether you look for compassion from them. That is all come to think of it, it may even be enough, generally speaking.
Franz Kafka