Franz Kafka

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog

Writers speak stench.

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.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

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.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

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

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

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

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

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

My guiding principle is this Guilt is never to be doubted.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.