Franz Kafka

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?

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.

But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

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.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

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.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

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

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.