Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-language writer from Prague who is considered a major figure of 20th-century literature. He wrote surreal, dark, pessimistic, and disturbing short stories and novels. His fictional world’s repressive nature-inspired the adjective “Kafkaesque,” used to describe absurd, gloomy, bizarre, eerie, or nightmarish objects.

Kafka described himself as a “peevish, miserable, silent, discontented, and sickly” man. His life was tragic. He grew up terrified of his tyrannical father. He graduated from law school; his job at an insurance company exhausted him. He suffered many mental illnesses and felt tormented by guilt and anxiety. He did not publish much of his written work during his lifetime, had a few love affairs but never got married, and died of tuberculosis at age 40.

Kafka’s literary works feature strange and dreadful incidents in innocent people’s lives. In his most famous work, Metamorphosis (1915, German: Die Verwandlung,) a young man dies out of guilt-ridden despair after being transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect. Metamorphosis starts with one of the most appalling and notable opening sentences in modern literature: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

Kafka’s The Judgment (1916, Das Urteil) is about a son who unquestioningly throws himself off a bridge after his father orders him to commit suicide. In the Penal Colony (1919, In der Strafkolonie) is about a machine that kills criminals by inscribing the nature of their offense on their skin.

Kafka was barely known during his lifetime but attained great posthumous fame thanks to his close friend Max Brod. Just before death, Kafka asked Brod to destroy all unpublished manuscripts. Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes, made significant changes to three manuscripts, gave them better endings, and published The Trial (1925, Der Prozess,) Amerika (1927,) and The Castle (1926, Das Schloss.) Only in the 1970s were the originals of these three novels published.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Franz Kafka

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience.
Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise;
because of impatience we cannot return.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Patience

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Patience

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Fight, Fighting

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Suffering, Humanity

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Books, Book

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Understanding

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Writing

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void…. The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void…. Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Judging, Judgment

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Imagination, Solitude, Experience

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolutions, Revolution, Bureaucracy

The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life—the terror of art.
Franz Kafka

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Questions

No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm, as though I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Unhappiness, Identity, Self-Knowledge, Happiness

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Education

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one’s triumph.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Cheating

My “fear” is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Part of The Whole, Fear

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Belief

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Achieving

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Aging, Beauty, Youth, Time

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
Franz Kafka

For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’ s every word.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Words

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Books

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Happiness

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Goals

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Judging, Judgment, Judges

Intellectual labor tears a man out of society. A craft, on the other hand, leads him toward men.
Franz Kafka

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Kisses, Kissing

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.
Franz Kafka
Topics: Life, Living, Nature

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *