Franz Kafka
it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.Collection: Lying
Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world.Collection: World
All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.Collection: Science
The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.Collection: Spiritual
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.Collection: Looks
Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.Collection: Philosophical
Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.Collection: Light
The truth is always an abyss.Collection: Truth Is
A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."Collection: Writing
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.Collection: Dog
First impressions are always unreliable.Collection: First Impression
He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.Collection: Doe
Books are a narcotic.Collection: Book
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?Collection: Book
The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.Collection: Men
They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.Collection: Talking
Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.Collection: Self
The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.Collection: Ice
Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.Collection: Doe
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.Collection: Inspirational
I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any moreCollection: Dream
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.Collection: Patience
Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.Collection: Compassion
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.Collection: Desire
That’s how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one’s hand.Collection: Real
The man in ecstasy and the man drowning – both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.Collection: Firsts
I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.Collection: Firsts
Adam’s first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.Collection: Firsts
We need the books that affect us like a disaster.Collection: Book