Quote

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
Delights
Torment
Torture
Delight
Higher
Fear
Self
Torments
Life
Ascent

More quotes by Franz Kafka

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. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.
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Going to pieces. To go to pieces so pointlessly and unnecessarily.
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Celibacy and suicide are a similar levels of understanding, suicide and a martyr's death not so by any means, perhaps marriage and a martyr's death.
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He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
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You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.
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My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.
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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.
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Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
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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.
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The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
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Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.
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One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay.
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Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.
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Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.
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In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafka
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In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.
Franz Kafka
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Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
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I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more
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Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.
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