Quote

I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read 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
Head
Books
Reading
Read
Rouse
Doe
Sting
Book
Bite
Believe
Bites
Blow

More quotes by Franz Kafka

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I do not see the world at all I invent it.
Franz Kafka
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This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.
Franz Kafka
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Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.
Franz Kafka
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There is nothing besides a spiritual world what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
Franz Kafka
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The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.
Franz Kafka
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Now I can look at you in peace I don't eat you any more.
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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A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.
Franz Kafka
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Life is merely terrible I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.
Franz Kafka
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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
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Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer.
Franz Kafka
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Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.
Franz Kafka
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Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.
Franz Kafka
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I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to the very soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.
Franz Kafka
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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.
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
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The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka