Quotes by Franz Kafka

"It's often safer to be in chains than to be free."

"What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself."

"One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."

"May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air."

"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."

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."

"Writers speak stench."

"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."

"It is often safer to be in chains than to be free."

"He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found."

"Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence."

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."

"Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable."

"A book should serve as 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."

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."

"The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum."

"A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."

"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."