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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

More quotes by Franz Kafka

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He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.
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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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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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The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.
Franz Kafka
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All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
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Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.
Franz Kafka
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One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.
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there is nothing bad to fear once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak
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All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.
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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.
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Writer speaks a stench.
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I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.
Franz Kafka
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The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.
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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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No, said the priest, you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.
Franz Kafka
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One day, a leopard stalked into the synagogue, roaring and lashing its tail. Three weeks later, it had become part of the liturgy.
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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Kill me, or you are a murderer.
Franz Kafka
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I do not see the world at all I invent it.
Franz Kafka
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You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.
Franz Kafka