Franz Kafka
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.Collection: Knowledge
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.Collection: Time
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.Collection: Truth
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.Collection: Brainy
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.Collection: Marriage
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.Collection: Knowledge
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.Collection: Beauty
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.Collection: History
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.Collection: Alone
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.Collection: Wisdom
Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.Collection: Positive
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.Collection: Relationship
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Time
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.Collection: Imagination
My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.Collection: Best
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.Collection: Nature
Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.Collection: Truth
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.Collection: Beauty
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.Collection: Happiness
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
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.
Dread of night. Dread of not-night.
Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
Writers speak stench.
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
Evil is whatever distracts.
We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.
Religions get lost as people do.
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.