Franz Kafka Quotes - Page 3

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

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.

By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.

Hombro con hombro, una cadena de hermanos, una sangre no ya encerrada en la mezquina circulación del cuerpo, sino circulando con una dulzura y sin embargo regresando sin fin a través de China.

So then you’re free?’
‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,
with dim, small lights.
Clouds which move across gray skies
past churches
with towers darkened in the dusk.
One who leans against granite railing
gazing into the evening waters,
His hands resting on old stones.

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.

My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.

The limited circle is pure.

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.

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.

...призрачной работе на службе, которая просто ускользает у меня из-под рук, сколько бы я з