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There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.

Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka
Age: 41 †
Born: 1883
Born: July 3
Died: 1924
Died: July 3
Aphorist
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Lawyer
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František Kafka
Kafka
Scoundrels
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More quotes by 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.
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Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within.
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Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
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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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The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it. Recognition of this contact is the fact that even the soul does not know of itself. Hence it must remain unknown. That would be sad only if there were anything apart from the soul, but there is nothing else.
Franz Kafka
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People who walk across dark bridges, past saints, with dim, small lights. Clouds which move across gray skies past churches with towers darkened in the dusk. One who leans against granite railing gazing into the evening waters, His hands resting on old stones.
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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.
Franz Kafka
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The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.
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The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
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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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There's an infinite amount of hope but not for us.
Franz Kafka
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The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
Franz Kafka
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If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)
Franz Kafka
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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.
Franz Kafka
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I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough.
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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We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.
Franz Kafka
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Don't bend don't water it down don't try to make it logical don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
Franz Kafka
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Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
Franz Kafka