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The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.

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
Torment
Torture
Delight
Higher
Fear
Self
Torments
Life
Ascent
Delights

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Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
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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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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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There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
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Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.
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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.
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Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
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May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
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The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.
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I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person.
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I, however, cannot force myself to use meat drugs to cheat on my loneliness.
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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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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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I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
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You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make
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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.
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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.
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We need the books that affect us like a disaster
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Officials are highly educated but one-sided in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him ... he won't understand a word of it.
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So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
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