Gems from Kafka

Post date: Nov 13, 2013 10:36:35 PM

Just like that..

1. Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence...

Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.

2. In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself. (Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.)

3. Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.

4. 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.

5. The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary.

6. All language is but a poor translation.

7. In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

8. Love is a drama of contradictions.

9. I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

10. Kill me, or you are a murderer.

11. The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

12. What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

13. You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

14. The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.

15. No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.

16. “So then you’re free?’

‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.”

17. It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.

18. People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.

19. Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.