By Possessing an exceptional talent for blending elements of reality and the surreal, Franz Kafka, known for his influential Franz Kafka quotes, emerged as a German-language writer of visionary fiction.
Kafka’s parents showed scant interest in their son’s aspiration to become a writer. His father’s sole devotion to material success disregarded Kafka’s creative ambitions, burdening him with powerlessness and self-doubt, as Kafka would later depict in his work, “Letter to Father.”
He evolved into a man who yearned for solitude despite projecting a charming and intelligent persona during the day while toiling diligently at an insurance company. The nights, however, were dedicated to writing and exploring themes such as anxiety, absurdity, alienation, and guilt.
Kafka managed to see some of his works published during his lifetime but achieved worldwide renown only posthumously. “The Trial” and “The Metamorphosis” are two of his most renowned works, offering profound introspective insights.
In this Article, More than 50 quotes by Franz Kafka will reshape your perspective.
Quotes of Franz Kafka
1. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka
2. 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.
Franz Kafka
3. I am a cage, in search of a bird.
Franz Kafka
4. Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
Franz Kafka
5. Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Franz Kafka
6. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
Franz Kafka
7. I am free and that is why I am lost.
Franz Kafka
8. I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
Franz Kafka
9. I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
Franz Kafka
10. I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
Franz Kafka
11. The meaning of life is that it stops.
Franz Kafka
12. A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.
Franz Kafka
13. All language is but a poor translation.
Franz Kafka
14. A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
Franz Kafka
15. 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.
Franz Kafka
16. I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
Franz Kafka
17. Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
Franz Kafka
18. By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
Franz Kafka
17. I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
Franz Kafka
18. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
Franz Kafka
19. I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and 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 more.
Franz Kafka
20. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka’s Love Quotes
21. You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.
Franz Kafka
22. 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.
Franz Kafka
23. Always only the desire to die and the not-yet-yielding; this alone is love.
Franz Kafka
24. Anyone who loves his neighbor within the limits of the world is doing no more and no less injustice than someone who loves himself within the limits of the world.
Franz Kafka
25. I am a very unhappy human being and you, dearest, simply had to be summoned to create an equilibrium for all this misery.
Franz Kafka
26. Then, at the last moment, I am forced to admit to myself that I was right after all, and that it was really impossible to go down into the burrow without exposing the thing I love best, for a little while at least, to all my enemies, on the ground, in the trees, in the air.
Franz Kafka
27. My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.
Franz Kafka
28. I am as I am, and that’s all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person.
Franz Kafka
29. Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.
Franz Kafka
30. [Love] has as few problems as a motocar. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.
Franz Kafka
31. I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.
Franz Kafka
32. It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones.
Franz Kafka
33. We come to mistake the crumbs of mercy for the feast of love.
Franz Kafka
34. There’s no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.
Franz Kafka
35. I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.
Franz Kafka
36. Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.
Franz Kafka
37. He remembered his family with deep feelings of love.
Franz Kafka
38. In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
Franz Kafka
39. Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.
Franz Kafka
40. Love is a drama of contradictions.
Franz Kafka
41. I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.
Franz Kafka
42. By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.
Franz Kafka
43. Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
Franz Kafka
44. I asked myself at the time: how is it that she is not astonished at herself, that she keeps her mouth closed, and expresses nothing of any wonderment?
Franz Kafka
45. Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer.
Franz Kafka
46. You belong to the people I have to combat, and you’re very comfortable among them, you’re even in love with the student, or if you don’t love him you do at least prefer him to your husband.
Franz Kafka
47. The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation,
Franz Kafka
48. The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man’s intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka Letters to Milena Quotes
49. I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
50. I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
51. I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
52. You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
53. I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
54. In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
55. Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
56. I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
57. I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
58. sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
59. I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
60. For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
Quotes From The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka is a profound literature filled with thought-provoking quotes. One such section is, “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” This poignant statement reflects the isolation and alienation experienced by the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, as he undergoes a bizarre transformation, highlighting Kafka’s skill in portraying the complex depths of human emotions and existential struggles.
61. I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
62. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
63. How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
64. Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
65. He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
66. He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
67. What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
68. Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
69. I only fear danger where I want to fear it.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
70. The sister played so beautifully. Her face was tilted to one side and she followed the notes with soulful and probing eyes. Gregor advanced a little, keeping his eyes low so that they might possibly meet hers. Was he a beast if music could move him so?
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka’s philosophical approach, which melds realism with the “supernatural” or otherworldly elements, strikes a balance between the romantic and the pragmatic, as evidenced by these quotes.
The term “Kafkaesque,” which alludes to Franz Kafka’s storytelling, has long been scrutinized and analyzed by critics and scholars. Some have characterized the fictional scenarios in Kafka’s short stories as peculiar and devoid of conventional logic.
Within this compilation of quotes, Kafka shares his musings on various topics, sometimes expressing a sense of despair, paradox, and pessimism. However, some of these quotes will resonate with you, conveying a profound sense of wisdom and accuracy.
