Category Archives: Kafka

Then as K. still lay absorbed in thought, she started up and began to tug at him like a child: ‘Come on, it’s too close down here’, and they embraced each other, her little body burned in K.’s hands, in a state of unconsciousness which K. tried again and again but in vain to master as they rolled a little way, landing with a thud on Klamm’s door, where they lay among the small puddles of beer and other refuse gathered on the floor. There, hours went past, hours in which they breathed as one, in which their hearts beat as one, hours in which K. was haunted by the feeling that he was losing himself or wandering into a strange country, father than ever man had wandered before, a country so strange that not even the air had anything in common with his native air, where one might die of strangeness, and yet whose enchantment was such that one could only go on and lose oneself further. 

— Kafka, The Castle (tr. W. and E. Muir)

In this love you are like a knife with which I explore myself. (Letter to Milena)

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked upon.

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 beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.

A cage went in search of a bird.

Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official’s office.

Previously I did not understand why I got no answer to my question; today I do not understand how I could believe I was capable of asking. But I didn’t really believe, I only asked.

The way is infinitely long, nothing of it can be subtracted, nothing can be added, and yet everyone applies his own childish yardstick to it. ‘Certainly, this yard of the way you still have to go, too, and it will be accounted unto you.’

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.

In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

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.

Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. 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 cannot be said that we are lacking in faith. Even the simple fact of our life is of a faith-value that can never be exhausted.’ ‘You suggest there is some faith-value in this? One cannot not live, after all.’ ‘It is precisely in this “Cannot, after all” that the mad strength of faith lies; it is in this negation that it takes on form.’

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

— Kafka

What idiotic complaints! And yet I know perfectly well that it has to pass and that I shan’t perish in the process. How does God put up with these complaints? Why doesn’t he strike me down? But in fact — and this again is the complainer talking — he does strike me down.

– Kafka, letter to Felice (tr. J. Stern and E. Duckworth)

My one fear – surely nothing worse can either be said or listened to – is that I shall never be able to possess you. At best I would be confined, like an unthinkingly faithful dog, to kissing your casually proffered hand, which would not be a sign of love, but of the despair of the animal condemned to silence and eternal separation. I would sit beside you and, as has happened, feel the breath and life of your body at my side, yet in reality be further from you than now, here in my room. I would never be able to attract your attention, and it would be lost to me altogether when you look out of the window, or lay your head in your hands. You and I would ride past the entire world, hand in hand, seemingly united, and none of it would be true. In short, though you might lean towards me far enough for you to be in danger, I would be excluded from you for ever.

— Kafka, letter to Felice (tr. J. Stern and E. Duckworth)

I was wise, if you like, because I was prepared for death at any moment, but not because I had taken care of everything that was given to me to do, rather because I had done none of it and could not even hope ever to do any of it.

*

Only not to overestimate what I have written, for in that way I make what is to be written unattainable.

— Kafka, Diaries (1912), tr. J Kresh

In all important matters, however, the citizens can always count on a refusal. And now the strange fact is that without this refusal one simply cannot get along, yet at the same time these official occasions designed to receive the refusal are by no means a formality.

— Kafka, ‘The Refusal’ (tr. T. and J. Stern)

I was not at all certain whether I had any advocates, I could not find out anything definite about it, every face was unfriendly, most people who came toward me and whom I kept meeting in the corridors looked like fat old women; they had huge blue-and-white striped aprons covering their entire bodies, kept stroking their stomachs and swaying awkwardly to and fro. I could not even find out whether we were in a law court. Some facts spoke for it, others against. What reminded me of a law court more than all the details was a droning noise which could be heard incessantly in the distance; one could not tell from which direction it came, it filled every room to such an extent that one had to assume it came from everywhere, or, what seemed more likely, that just the place where one happened to be standing was the very place where the droning originated. But this was probably an illusion, for it came from a distance.

[…]

But back I cannot go, this waste of time, this admission of having been on the wrong track would be unbearable for me. What? Run downstairs in this brief, hurried life accompanied as it is by that impatient droning? Impossible. The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose one second you have already lost your whole life, for it is no longer, it is always just as long as the time you lose. So if you have started out on a walk, continue it whatever happens; you can only gain, you run no risk, in the end you may fall over a precipice perhaps, but had you turned back after the first steps and run downstairs you would have fallen at once – and not perhaps, but for certain. So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don’t worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards.

— Kafka, ‘Advocates’ (tr. T. and J. Stern)