Franz Kafka

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.

The man who does not lay the foundation of his life on the rock of marriage, but on the shifting sands of bachelorhood, is a fool.

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

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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

I have been so completely cut off from myself, from my own being, that I am no longer able to distinguish between what is mine and what is not mine.

Sleep is the most innocent creature and the sleepless man the most sinful.

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

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world, not even oneself.

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

What is the good of dragging a man from his bed, if you don't give him a reason to get up?

The decisive moment in human development is a continuous one.

You are free and that is why you are lost.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

The fact that I can't sleep is not the problem, the problem is that I can't wake up.

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.