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We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.

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
Soon
Crime
Shall
Demons
Justice
Secrecy
Age
Deepest
Able
Possessed
Live
Demon
Goodness

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Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
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I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.
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No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing..
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Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry it keeps hap­pen­ing in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.
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April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.
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You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
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Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.
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I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
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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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So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
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There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought
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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.
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There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.
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The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination.
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The cruelty of death lies in the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end. The greatest cruelty of death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow. Our salvation is death, but not this one.
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A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
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Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.
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The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.
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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.
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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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