Top 70+ Franz Kafka Quotes | Sayings About Life, Love

Franz Kafka Quotes | Franz Kafka’s born on 3 July 1883 in Prague, Bohemia. Today which is known as the Czech Republic. He was born in a middle-class family.

Including Franz, he had a total of 6 siblings. Out of 6, two younger brothers died at birth, and three younger sisters were alive.

His father’s name was Hermann Kafka. He was a businessman, but he was a kind of dictatorial person. His mother’s name was Julie, who was the daughter of the owner of a beer-making company.

She was a well-educated person. She also helped a lot for the growth in the business of Franz’s father, i.e., her husband. She used to work for about 12 hours a day.

In the year 1907, Kafka started working in an Italian insurance company. He worked there for about a year.

By 1917, his health started declining, and he had tuberculosis. At this time, he got a lot of support from the family, especially his sister Ottla.

Talking about Kafka’s whole life, he had to face diseases like depression and social anxiety almost all his life. He used to have many problems like migraines, insomnia, constipation, and so on.

By 1924, his disease tuberculosis developed hugely, due to which he died on 3 June 1924.


What is Franz Kafka best known for?


He is famous for his novels The Trial, in which a man is charged with a crime that is never named, and The Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes to find himself transformed into an insect.


quotes of franz kafka


“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


“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

– Franz Kafka


“There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness.”

– Franz Kafka


“Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle – maybe there is none.”

– Franz Kafka


“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe … but not for us.”

– Franz Kafka


“Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”

– Franz Kafka


“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”

– Franz Kafka


franz kafka quotes (from novel, Trial)


“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


“There were dark hours, of course, such as came to everybody, in which you thought you had achieved nothing at all, in which it seemed to you that only the cases predestined from the start to seucceed came to a good end, which they would have reached in any event without your help, while every one of the others was doomed to fail in spite of all your manœuvres, all your exertions, all the illusory little victories on which you plumed yourself.”

– Franz Kafka


franz kafka metamorphosis quotes


“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”

– Franz Kafka


“It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.”

– Franz Kafka


“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

– Franz Kafka


“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


franz kafka quotes


“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


“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”

– Franz Kafka


“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”

– Franz Kafka


“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”

– Franz Kafka


“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”

– Franz Kafka


“Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”

– Franz Kafka


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

– Franz Kafka


“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”

– Franz Kafka


“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.”

– Franz Kafka


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

– Franz Kafka


“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”

– Franz Kafka


“In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.”

– Franz Kafka


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

– Franz Kafka


“We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.”

– Franz Kafka


“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

– Franz Kafka


franz kafka quotes everything you love


“One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.”

– Franz Kafka


“Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.”

– Franz Kafka


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

– Franz Kafka


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

– Franz Kafka


“My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.”

– Franz Kafka


“Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.”

– Franz Kafka


“There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.”

– Franz Kafka


“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

– Franz Kafka


“In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”

– Franz Kafka


“God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.”

– Franz Kafka


“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

– Franz Kafka


“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

– Franz Kafka


kafka quotes meaning of life


“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”

– Franz Kafka



“We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.”

– Franz Kafka


“Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.”

– Franz Kafka


“We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.”

– Franz Kafka


“Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.”

– Franz Kafka


“We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.”

– Franz Kafka


“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.”

– Franz Kafka

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