Franz Kafka Quotes

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

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.

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.

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

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle – maybe there is none.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

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.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.