Franz Kafka

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of its triumph.

I have spent my whole life trying to get to the door, and I am still outside.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are.

The greatest joy is to be able to do something well.

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, which is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. I am not clean, no one is clean, but I am dirtier than all the others, which is why I am always trying to wash myself.

The disadvantage of the world is that it is not a dream.

The world is a gigantic prison, and the only way out is through the door of death.

The man who has not been in hell will never understand heaven.

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, which can be experienced only in these bones.

What is the good of dragging a tired body to the office if the soul is not there?

My life is a constant attempt to atone for the fact that I exist.

The only way to deal with the world is to be so absolutely free that you become a part of its rebellion.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, and I think differently from the way I ought to think. And so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

The fact that I can't write is a proof of my existence.

I am a bad writer, but I am a good person.

The man who does not have a roof over his head is not a man; he is a beast.

The spiritual world is not something that is outside of us, but something that is within us.

All that you are is a result of what you have thought.

Leisure is the beginning of all evil.

One must not cheat the world of its pain, for it is through pain that it becomes beautiful.