The 21 best quotes by Franz Kafka
The Czechoslovakian writer was a controversial figure who synthesized pessimism and decadence.
Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) was a prominent Czechoslovak author who was born in Prague.
Of Jewish origin, Kafka's work influenced great authors of world literature, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre or Milan Kundera. Among his most widely read and memorable works are The Trial (1925), The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Doom (1913).
His literary style was associated with expressionism, magical realism and existentialism. In his novels he attests to a gray vision of the future and human life, largely influenced by the context of World War II and by his probable schizoid personality disorder.
Franz Kafka quotes and aphorisms.
In today's article we are going to know the best famous quotes and phrases of Franz KafkaWe are going to get closer to his literary and personal universe, to understand his work and his thoughts through several fragments of his books and letters.
Without further ado, we begin.
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind a trail of bureaucracy.
It could well be a way of seeing politics as a mere game of mirages and wills that end up coming to nothing.
2. Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who retains the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Enthusiasm and its strong link with the fact of feeling young.
3. Man's gesture of bitterness is often just the petrified embarrassment of a child.
Quite an apt metaphor.
4. In your struggle against the rest of the world I advise you to side with the rest of the world.
One of those phrases of Franz Kafka in which he sums up a self-sacrificing philosophy.
5. All knowledge, all questions and answers are found in the dog.
His favorite animal, all honesty and spontaneity.
6. Leisure is the father of all vices, and is the crowning of all virtues.
A duality difficult to express better.
7. To possess does not exist, there is only being: that being that aspires until the last breath, until asphyxiation.
To have means nothing.
8. To reflect serenely, very serenely, is better than to make desperate decisions.
Reflection always invites us to make more considered and intelligent decisions, without being influenced by emotions.
9. Don Quixote's misfortune was not his fantasy, but Sancho Panza.
About the work of Miguel de Cervantes: the worst thing that happened to Don Quixote is to know the reality of things, a stubborn, boring and lethal realism.
10. From a certain point there is no return. That is the point to reach.
A metaphorical phrase by Franz Kafka that can be applied to a multitude of circumstances.
11. Do not despair, not even for the fact that you do not despair. When everything seems to be over, new forces emerge. This means that you live.
One of his few optimistic and hopeful phrases.
12. Literature is always an expedition to the truth.
Despite being works of fiction, there is a lot of reality in each story that is explained.
13. To believe means to liberate in oneself the indestructible or better: to liberate oneself or better still: to be indestructible or better still: to be.
In the hope of believing lies vitality, according to Kafka.
14. If the world opposes you, you must side with the world.
You are probably wrong, or at least it should appear that you are not. Dissimulate.
15. Simply, not to overestimate what I have written; otherwise, what I still hope to write would become unattainable.
A way to effectively value your achievements, to strive to reach even higher heights.
16. I must confess that I once envied someone very much because he was loved, cared for, defended from reason and force and because he lay in peace under the flowers. I always have envy at my fingertips.
A sign of vulnerability.
17. A book should be the axe that breaks the icy sea within us.
On reading and its powers.
18. Every man carries in him a room. It is a fact confirmed by our own hearing. When one walks fast and listens, especially at night when all around us is silence, one hears, for example, the trembling of a badly hung wall mirror.
An interesting reflection on human perception.
19. It is a blow because it will take time away from me and I need all the time and a thousand times more, preferably all the time that exists, to think of you, to breathe in you.
One of his letters to Milena.
20. He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek is found.
To find we must be attentive, but without falling into obsession.
21. It is often safer to be chained than to be free.
Another phrase of Franz Kafka in which we can glimpse his apocado spirit.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)