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If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

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
Must
Wake
Work
Sea
Inside
Break
Literature
Reading
Frozen
Read
Literary
Doe
Ice

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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 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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One reads in order to ask questions
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A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
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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.
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A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
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It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
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I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.
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Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
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Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
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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.
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Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
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I do not see the world at all I invent it.
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There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
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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.
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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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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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The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
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