Background Image

...

Everyone Strives To Attain The Law,' Answers The Man, 'how Does It Come About, Then, That In All These Years No One Has Come Seeking Admittance But Me?' The Doorkeeper Perceives That The Man Is Nearing His End And His Hearing Is Failing, So He Bellows In His Ear: 'no One But You Could Gain Admittance Through This Door, Since This Door Was Intended For You. I Am Now Going To Shut It.

-Franz Kafka

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Everyone Strives To Attain

Franz Kafka

...

Everyone Strives To Attain The Law,' Answers The Man, 'how Does It Come About, Then, That In All These Years No One Has Come Seeking Admittance But Me?' The Doorkeeper Perceives That The Man Is Nearing His End And His Hearing Is Failing, So He Bellows In His Ear: 'no One But You Could Gain Admittance Through This Door, Since This Door Was Intended For You. I Am Now Going To Shut It.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Franz Kafka

The Messiah Will Only Come When He Is No Longer Needed.

For Words Are Magical Formulae. They Leave Finger Marks Be Hind On The Brain, Which In The Twinkling Of An Eye Become The Footprints Of History. One Ought To Watch One' S Every Word.

They Say Ignorance Is Bliss.... They're Wrong

Ignorance Is Bliss

Every Thing That You Love, You Will Eventually Lose, But In The End, Love Will Return In A Different Form.

So Then You’re Free?’ ‘yes, I’m Free,’ Said Karl, And Nothing Seemed More Worthless Than His Freedom.

One Must Fight To Get To The Top, Especially If One Starts At The Bottom.

Believing Means Liberating The Indestructible Element In Oneself, Or, More Accurately, Liberating Oneself, Or, More Accurately, Being Indestructible, Or, More Accurately, Being.

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster, That Grieve Us Deeply, Like The Death Of Someone We Loved More Than Ourselves, Like Being Banished Into Forests Far From Everyone, Like A Suicide. A Book Must Be The Axe For The Frozen Sea Inside Us.

How Pathetically Scanty My Self-knowledge Is Compared With, Say, My Knowledge Of My Room. There Is No Such Thing As Observation Of The Inner World, As There Is Of The Outer World.

Every Revolution Evaporates And Leaves Behind Only The Slime Of A New Bureaucracy.

I Never Wish To Be Easily Defined. I’d Rather Float Over Other People’s Minds As Something Strictly Fluid And Non-perceivable; More Like A Transparent, Paradoxically Iridescent Creature Rather Than An Actual Person.

They're Talking About Things Of Which They Don't Have The Slightest Understanding, Anyway. It's Only Because Of Their Stupidity That They're Able To Be So Sure Of Themselves.

There Are Times When I Am Convinced I Am Unfit For Any Human Relationship.

Human Relations

The History Of Mankind Is The Instant Between Two Strides Taken By A Traveler.

It Requires Enormous Presence Of Mind Or Rather Quickness Of Wit, When Opening Your Eyes To Seize Hold As It Were Of Everything In The Room At Exactly The Same Place Where You Had Let It Go On The Previous Evening. That Is Why The Moment Of Waking Up Was The Riskiest Moment Of The Day. Once That Was Well Over Without Deflecting You From Your Orbit, You Could Take Heart Of Grace For The Rest Of The Day.

Presence Of Mind

Art Flies Around Truth, But With The Definite Intention Of Not Getting Burnt. Its Capacity Lies In Finding In The Dark Void A Place Where The Beam Of Light Can Be Intensely Caught, Without This Having Been Perceptible Before.

German Is My Mother Tongue And As Such More Natural To Me, But I Consider Czech Much More Affectionate, Which Is Why Your Letter Removes Several Uncertainties; I See You More Clearly, The Movements Of Your Body, Your Hands, So Quick, So Resolute, It’s Almost Like A Meeting.

We Live In An Age Which Is So Possessed By Demons, That Soon We Shall Only Be Able To Do Goodness And Justice In The Deepest Secrecy, As If It Were A Crime.

Don't Despair, Not Even Over The Fact That You Don't Despair.

Life Is Merely Terrible; I Feel It As Few Others Do. Often — And In My Inmost Self Perhaps All The Time — I Doubt Whether I Am A Human Being.

You're Not Cross With Me, Though?" He Said. She Pulled Her Hand Away And Answered, "no, No, I'm Never Cross With Anyone.

Knowledge We Have. Anyone Who Strives For It With Particular Intensity Is Suspect Of Striving Against It.

Love Has As Few Problems As A Motor Car. The Only Problems Are The Driver, The Passengers, And The Road.

A Man Of Action Forced Into A State Of Thought Is Unhappy Until He Can Get Out Of It.

In Me, By Myself, Without Human Relationship, There Are No Visible Lies. The Limited Circle Is Pure.

If The Book We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, As With A Fist Hammering On Our Skull, Why Then Do We Read It?

All Human Errors Are Impatience, A Premature Breaking Off Of Methodical Procedure, An Apparent Fencing-in Of What Is Apparently At Issue.

Simply Wait, Be Quiet, Still The World Will Freely Offer Itself To You.

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

I See, These Books Are Probably Law Books, And It Is An Essential Part Of The Justice Dispensed Here That You Should Be Condemned Not Only In Innocence But Also In Ignorance.

There Is An Infinite Amount Of Hope In The Universe ... But Not For Us.

There Is Nothing Bad To Fear; Once You Have Crossed That Threshold, All Is Well. Another World, And You Do Not Have To Speak

He Thought Back On His Family With Deep Emotion And Love. His Conviction That He Would Have To Disappear Was, If Possible, Even Firmer Than His Sister's. He Remained In This State Of Empty And Peaceful Reflection Until The Tower Clock Struck Three In The Morning. He Still Saw That Outside The Window Everything Was Beginning To Grow Light. Then, Without His Consent, His Head Sank Down To The Floor, And From His Nostrils Streamed His Last Weak Breath.

The Spirit Becomes Free Only When It Ceases To Be A Support.

Each Of Us Has His Own Way Of Emerging From The Underworld, Mine Is By Writing. That's Why The Only Way I Can Keep Going, If At All, Is By Writing, Not Through Rest And Sleep. I Am Far More Likely To Achieve Peace Of Mind Through Writing Than The Capacity To Write Through Peace.

The Ulterior Motives With Which You Absorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil. The Animal Wrests The Whip From Its Master And Whips Itself In Order To Become Master, Not Knowing That This Is Only A Fantasy Produced By A New Knot In The Master's Whiplash.

I Think We Ought To Read Only The Kind Of Books That Wound And Stab Us.

It Would Be Very Unjust To Say That You Deserted Me, But That I Was Deserted, And Sometimes Terribly So, Is True.

The Old Incapacity. Interrupted My Writing For Barely Ten Days And Already Cast Out. Once Again Prodigious Efforts Stand Before Me. You Have To Dive Down, As It Were, And Sink More Rapidly Than That Which Sinks In Advance Of You.

Man Cannot Live Without A Continuous Confidence In Something Indestructible Within Himself.

People Keep Themselves At A Tolerable Height Above An Infernal Abyss Toward Which They Gravitate Only By Putting Out All Their Strength And Lovingly Helping One Another. They Are Tied Together By Ropes, And It's Bad Enough When The Ropes Around An Individual Loosen And He Drops Somewhat Lower Than The Others Into Empty Space; Ghastly When The Ropes Break And He Falls. That's Why We Should Cling To The Others.

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.

No Matter How Much You Keep Encouraging Someone Who Is Blindfolded To Stare Through The Cloth, He Still Won’t See A Thing.".

What Is Gayer Than Believing In A Household God?

I Do Not Read Advertisements. I Would Spend All Of My Time Wanting Things.

A Picture Of My Existence... Would Show A Useless Wooden Stake Covered In Snow... Stuck Loosely At A Slant In The Ground In A Ploughed Field On The Edge Of A Vast Open Plain On A Dark Winter Night.

To Write Prescriptions Is Easy, But To Come To An Understanding With People Is Hard.

From Outside One Will Always Triumphantly Impress Theories Upon The World And Then Fall Straight Into The Ditch One Has Dug, But Only From Inside Will One Keep Oneself And The World Quiet And True.

I'm Thinking Only Of My Illness And My Health, Though Both, The First As Well As The Second, Are You.

Every Dog Has Like Me The Impulse To Question, And I Have Like Every Dog The Impulse Not To Answer.

A Book Should Serve As An Axe To The Ice Inside Us.

In A Certain Sense You Deny The Existence Of This World. You Explain Life As A State Of Rest, A State Of Rest In Motion.

Celibacy And Suicide Are A Similar Levels Of Understanding, Suicide And A Martyr's Death Not So By Any Means, Perhaps Marriage And A Martyr's Death.

The Purpose Of A Story Is To Be An Axe That Breaks Up The Ice Within Us.

You Can Choose To Be Free , But It's Last Decision You'll Ever Make

My Doubts Stand In A Circle Around Every Word, I See Them Before I See The Word, But What Then! I Do Not See The Word At All, I Invent It.

For Everything Outside The Phenomenal World, Language Can Only Be Used Allusively, But Never Even Approximately In A Comparative Way, Since, Corresponding As It Does To The Phenomenal World, It Is Concerned Only With Property And Its Relations.

Towards The Avoidance Of A Piece Of Verbal Confusion: What Is Intended To Be Actively Destroyed Must First Of All Have Been Firmly Grasped; What Crumbles Away Crumbles Away, But Cannot Be Destroyed.

A Lawyer Is A Person Who Writes A 10,000-word Document And Calls It A "brief."

Many A Book Is Like A Key To Unknown Chambers Within The Castle Of One’s Own Self.

I Am A Cage, In Search Of A Bird.

Two Possibilities: Making Oneself Infinitely Small Or Being So. The Second Is Perfection, That Is To Say, Inactivity, The First Is Beginning, That Is To Say, Action.

The Kafka Paradox: Art Depends On Truth, But Truth, Being Indivisable, Cannot Know Itself: To Tell The Truth Is To Lie. Thus The Writer Is The Truth, And Yet When He Speakes He Lies.

Telling The Truth

Hiding Places There Are Innumerable, Escape Is Only One, But Possibilities Of Escape, Again, Are As Many As Hiding Places.

Every Word First Looks Around In Every Direction Before Letting Itself Be Written Down By Me.

Last Night I Dreamed About You. What Happened In Detail I Can Hardly Remember, All I Know Is That We Kept Merging Into One Another. I Was You, You Were Me. Finally You Somehow Caught Fire.

It Is Comforting To Reflect That The Disproportion Of Things In The World Seems To Be Only Arithmetical.

There Is A Destination But No Way There; What We Refer To As Way Is Hesitation.

First Impressions Are Always Unreliable.

First Impression

What A Fate: To Be Condemned To Work For A Firm Where The Slightest Negligence At Once Gave Rise To The Gravest Suspicion! Were All The Employees Nothing But A Bunch Of Scoundrels, Was There Not Among Them One Single Loyal Devoted Man Who, Had He Wasted Only An Hour Or So Of The Firm's Time In The Morning, Was So Tormented By Conscience As To Be Driven Out Of His Mind And Actually Incapable Of Leaving His Bed?

There Will Be No Proof That I Ever Was A Writer.

The Truth Is Always An Abyss.

Tyranny Or Slavery, Born Of Selfishness, Are The Two Educational Methods Of Parents; All Gradations Of Tyranny Or Slavery.

Written Kisses Don't Reach Their Destination, Rather They Are Drunk On The Way By The Ghosts.

So Eager Are Our People To Obliterate The Present.

Test Yourself On Mankind. It Is Something That Makes The Doubter Doubt, The Believer Believe.

I Can't Feel A Thing; All Mournful Petal Storms Are Dancing Inside The Very Private Spring Of My Head.

I Have Spent My Life Resisting The Desire To End It.

There Are Questions We Could Not Get Past If We Were Not Set Free From Them By Our Very Nature.

At That Point I Asked Myself: How Is It That She Is Not Amazed At Herself, That She Keeps Her Lips Closed And Makes No Such Remark?

So Long As You Have Food In Your Mouth, You Have Solved All Questions For The Time Being.

If I Shall Exist Eternally, How Shall I Exist Tomorrow?

One Of The First Signs Of The Beginning 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 Willl Only In Time Come To Hate. In This There Is Also A Residue Of Belief That During The Move The Master Will Chance To Come Along The Corridor, Look At The Prisoner And Say: "this Man Is Not To Be Locked Up Again, He Is To Come With Me.

One Reads In Order To Ask Questions

The Thornbush Is The Old Obstacle In The Road. It Must Catch Fire If You Want To Go Further.

Some Books Seem Like A Key To Unfamiliar Rooms In One’s Own Castle.

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.

Nothing, You Know, Gives The Body Greater Satisfaction Than Ordering People About, Or At Least Believing In One's Ability To Do So.

You Are At Once Both The Quiet And The Confusion Of My Heart.

Picasso Only Registers The Deformities Which Have Not Yet Penetrated Our Consciousness. Art Is A Mirror Which Goes 'fast' Like A Watch - Sometimes.

I Hate Everything That Does Not Relate To Literature, Conversations Bore Me (even If They Relate To Literature), To Visit People Bores Me, The Sorrows And Joys Of My Relatives Bore Me To The Very Soul. Conversation Takes The Importance, The Seriousness, The Truth, Out Of Everything I Think.

There Is Nothing Besides A Spiritual World; What We Call The World Of The Senses Is The Evil In The Spiritual World, And What We Call Evil Is Only The Necessity Of A Moment In Our Eternal Evolution.

If I Didn't Have My Parents To Think About I'd Have Given In My Notice A Long Time Ago, I'd Have Gone Up To The Boss And Told Him Just What I Think, Tell Him Everything I Would, Let Him Know Just What I Feel. He'd Fall Right Off His Desk! And It's A Funny Sort Of Business To Be Sitting Up There At Your Desk, Talking Down At Your Subordinates From Up There, Especially When You Have To Go Right Up Close Because The Boss Is Hard Of Hearing.

I Miss You Deeply, Unfathomably, Senselessly, Terribly.

Youth Is Happy Because It Has The Capacity To See Beauty.

Nothing Is As Deceptive As A Photograph.

Anyone Who Believes Cannot Experience Miracles. By Day One Does Not See Any Stars. Anyone Who Does Miracles Says: I Cannot Let Goof The Earth.

People Who Walk Across Dark Bridges, Past Saints, With Dim, Small Lights. Clouds Which Move Across Gray Skies Past Churches With Towers Darkened In The Dusk. One Who Leans Against Granite Railing Gazing Into The Evening Waters, His Hands Resting On Old Stones.

To Every Instant There Is A Correspondence In Something Outside Time. This World Here And Now Cannot Be Followed By A Beyond, For The Beyond Is Eternal, Hence It Cannot Be In Temporal Contact With This World Here And Now.

If Education Tries To Make Other Persons Out Of Us Than We Essentially Are, Deeper Inside, It Stultifies, And Reproach Matters.

From The True Antagonist Illimitable Courage Is Transmitted To You. To What Indifference People May Come, To What Profound Conviction Of Having Lost The Right Track Forever.

They Were Offered The Choice Between Becoming Kings Or The Couriers Of Kings. The Way Children Would, They All Wanted To Be Couriers. Therefore There Are Only Couriers Who Hurry About The World, Shouting To Each Other - Since There Are No Kings - Messages That Have Become Meaningless. They Would Like To Put An End To This Miserable Life Of Theirs But They Dare Not Because Of Their Oaths Of Service.

Palestine Needs Earth, But It Does Not Need Lawyers.

I Can’t Think Of Any Greater Happiness Than To Be With You All The Time, Without Interruption, Endlessly, Even Though I Feel That Here In This World There’s No Undisturbed Place For Our Love, Neither In The Village Nor Anywhere Else; And 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.

Photography Concentrates One's Eye On The Superficial. For That Reason It Obscures The Hidden Life Which Glimmers Through The Outlines Of Things Like A Play Of Light And Shade. One Can't Catch That Even With The Sharpest Lens.

Written Kisses Never Arrive At Their Destination; The Ghosts Drink Them Up Along The Way.

What If I Slept A Little More And Forgot About All This Nonsense.

If The Literature We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, Why Then Do We Read It? A Literary Work Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Sea Frozen Inside Us.

If There Is A Transmigration Of Souls Then I Am Not Yet On The Bottom Rung. My Life Is A Hesitation Before Birth.

For We Are Like Tree Trunks In The Snow. In Appearance They Lie Smoothly And A Little Push Should Be Enough To Set Them Rolling. No, It Can't Be Done, For They Are Firmly Wedded To The Ground. But See, Even That Is Only Appearance.

One Advantage In Keeping A Diary Is That You Become Aware With Reassuring Clarity Of The Changes Which You Constantly Suffer.

Humility Provides Everyone, Even Him Who Despairs In Solitude, With The Strongest Relationship To His Fellow Man.

The Dream Reveals The Reality Which Conception Lags Behind. That Is The Horror Of Life-the Terror Of Art.

The Messiah Will Come Only When He Is No Longer Necessary, He Will Come Only One Day After His Arrival, He Will Not Come On The Last Day, But On The Last Day Of All.

One Morning, As Gregor Samsa Was Waking Up From Anxious Dreams, He Discovered That In His Bed He Had Been Changed Into A Monstrous Bug.

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.

Human Judgment Of Human Actions Is True And Void , That Is To Say, First True And Then Void.... The Judgment Of The Word Is True, The Judgment In Itself Is Void.... Only He Who Is A Party Can Really Judge, But As A Party He Cannot Judge. Hence It Follows That There Is No Possibility Of Judgment In The World, Only A Glimmer Of It.

One Must Not Cheat Anyone, Not Even The World Of Its Victory.

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.

It's Sometimes Quite Astonishing That A Single, Average Life Is Enough To Encompass So Much That It's At All Possible Ever To Have Any Success In One's Work Here.

I Never Wish To Be Easily Defined.

I Like To Make Use Of What I Know

Suffering Is The Positive Element In This World, Indeed It Is The Only Link Between This World And The Positive.

World Suffering

What I Write Is Different From What I Say, What I Say Is Different From What I Think, What I Think Is Different From What I Ought To Think And So It Goes Further Into The Deepest Darkness.

Let Me Remind You Of The Old Maxim: People Under Suspicion Are Better Moving Than At Rest, Since At Rest They May Be Sitting In The Balance Without Knowing It, Being Weighed Together With Their Sins.

We Were Expelled From Paradise, But It Was Not Destroyed. The Expulsion From Paradise Was In One Sense A Piece Of Good Fortune, For If We Had Not Been Expelled, Paradise Would Have Had To Be Destroyed.

There Has Never Been A Time In Which I Have Been Convinced From Within Myself That I Am Alive. You See, I Have Only Such A Fugitive Awareness Of Things Around Me That I Always Feel They Were Once Real And Are Now Fleeting Away. I Have A Constant Longing, My Dear Sir, To Catch A Glimpse Of Things As They May Have Been Before They Show Themselves To Me.

From A Certain Point Onward There Is No Longer Any Turning Back. That Is The Point That Must Be Reached.

Slept, Awoke, Slept, Awoke, Miserable Life.

He Who Seeks Does Not Find, But He Who Does Not Seek Will Be Found.

He Was A Tool Of The Boss, Without Brains Or Backbone.

In The Fight Between You And The World, Back The World.

A Book Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Seas Frozen Inside Our Soul.

The Various Forms Of Despair At The Various Stations On The Road.

Everyone Strives To Attain The Law,' Answers The Man, 'how Does It Come About, Then, That In All These Years No One Has Come Seeking Admittance But Me?' The Doorkeeper Perceives That The Man Is Nearing His End And His Hearing Is Failing, So He Bellows In His Ear: 'no One But You Could Gain Admittance Through This Door, Since This Door Was Intended For You. I Am Now Going To Shut It.

Art Is For The Artist Is Only Suffering Through Which He Releases Himself For Further Suffering.

The Fact That There Is Nothing But A Spiritual World Deprives Us Of Hope And Gives Us Certainty.

One Day, A Leopard Stalked Into The Synagogue, Roaring And Lashing Its Tail. Three Weeks Later, It Had Become Part Of The Liturgy.

God Gives The Nuts, But He Does Not Crack Them.

As Gregor Samsa Awoke One Morning From Uneasy Dreams He Found Himself Transformed In His Bed Into A Gigantic Insect.

I Can Once More Carry On A Conversation With Myself, And Don't Stare So Into Complete Emptiness. Only In This Way Is There Any Possibility Of Improvement For Me.

In A Way, You Are Poetry Material; You Are Full Of Cloudy Subtleties I Am Willing To Spend A Lifetime Figuring Out. Words Burst In Your Essence And You Carry Their Dust In The Pores Of Your Ethereal Individuality.

I Have Hardly Anything In Common With Myself And Should Stand Very Quietly In A Corner, Content That I Can Breathe.

My Job Is Unbearable To Me Because It Conflicts With My Only Desire And My Only Calling, Which Is Literature. Since I Am Nothing But Literature And Can And Want To Be Nothing Else, My Job Will Never Take Possession Of Me, It May, However, Shatter Me Completely, And This Is By No Means A Remote Possibility.

How Can One Take Delight In The World Unless One Flees To It For Refuge?

By Imposing Too Great A Responsibility, Or Rather, All Responsibility, On Yourself, You Crush Yourself.

It Isn't Necessary That You Leave Home. Sit At Your Desk And Listen. Don't Even Listen, Just Wait. Don't Wait, Be Still And Alone. The Whole World Will Offer Itself To You.

Should I Be Grateful Or Should I Curse The Fact That Despite All Misfortune I Can Still Feel Love, An Unearthly Love But Still For Earthly Objects.

Writing Is A Sweet, Wonderful Reward.

You Do Not Need To Leave Your Room. Remain Sitting At Your Table And Listen. Do Not Even Listen, Simply Wait, Be Quiet, Still And Solitary. The World Will Freely Offer Itself To You To Be Unmasked, It Has No Choice, It Will Roll In Ecstasy At Your Feet.

I Usually Solve Problems By Letting Them Devour Me.

To Animalise Is Humane, To Humanise Is Animal.

If What Was Supposed To Have Been Destroyed In Paradise Was Destructible, Then It Was Not Decisive; But If It Was Indestructible, Then We Are Living In A False Belief.

I Think We Ought To Read Only The Kind Of Books That Wound And Stab Us. If The Book We Are Reading Doesn't Wake Us Up With A Blow On The Head, What Are We Reading It For?

What Is Written Is Merely The Dregs Of Experience.

A Book Must Be The Ax For The Frozen Sea Within Us.

There Art Two Cardinal Sins From Which All Others Spring: Impatience And Laziness.

Every New Discovery Is Assumed At Once Into The Sum Total Of Knowledge, And With That Ceases In A Sense To Be A Discovery; It Dissolves Into The Whole And Disappears, And One Must Have A Trained Scientific Eye Even To Recognize It After That.

If You Find Someone Who Makes You Smile, Who Checks Up On You Often To See If You're Okay. Who Watches Out Or You And Wants The Best For You. Who Loves And Respects You. Don't Let Them Go. People Like That Are Hard To Find.

The Founder Brought The Laws From The Lawgiver; The Faithful Are Meant To Announce The Laws To The Lawgiver.

Being Alone Has A Power Over Me That Never Fails. My Interior Dissolves (for The Time Being Only Superficially) And Is Ready To Release What Lies Deeper. When I Am Willfully Alone, A Slight Ordering Of My Interior Begins To Take Place And I Need Nothing More.

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.

I Am A Retiring, Silent, Unsociable, And Discontent Person.

Religions Get Lost As People Do.

Leopards Break Into The Temple And Drink All The Sacrificial Vessels Dry; It Keeps Happening; In The End, It Can Be Calculated In Advance And Is Incorporated Into The Ritual.

The Fathers Of The Church Were Not Afraid To Go Out Into The Desert Because They Had A Richness In Their Hearts. But We, With Richness All Around Us, Are Afraid, Because The Desert Is In Our Hearts.

You Need Not Even Listen, Just Wait...the World Will Offer Itself Freely To You, Unmasking Itself.

In A Certain Sense The Good Is Comfortless.

This Inescapable Duty To Observe Oneself: If Someone Else Is Observing Me, Naturally I Have To Observe Myself Too; If None Observe Me, I Have To Observe Myself All The Closer.

If It Had Been Possible To Build The Tower Of Babel Without Climbing It, It Would Have Been Permitted.

If You Become Involved With Me, You Will Be Throwing Yourself Into The Abyss.

But Questions That Don’t Answer Themselves At The Very Moment Of Their Asking Are Never Answered.

Hold Fast To The Diary From Today On! Write Regularly! Don't Surrender! Even If No Salvation Should Come, I Want To Be Worthy Of It Every Moment.

Start With What Is Right Rather Than What Is Acceptable.

Beyond A Certain Point There Is No Return. This Point Has To Be Reached.

Better To Have, And Not Need, Than To Need, And Not Have.

Disaster Preparedness

The Indestructible Is One: It Is Each Individual Human Being And, At The Same Time, It Is Common To All, Hence The Incomparably Indivisible Union That Exists Between Human Beings.

True Undoubting Is The Teacher's Part, Continual Undoubting The Part Of The Pupil.

I Write Differently From What I Speak, I Speak Differently From What I Think, I Think Differently From The Way I Ought To Think, And So It All Proceeds Into Deepest Darkness.

It Receives You When You Come And Dismisses You When You Go.

Officials Are Highly Educated But One-sided; In His Own Department An Official Can Grasp Whole Trains Of Thought From A Single Word, But Let Him Have Something From Another Department Explained To Him ... He Won't Understand A Word Of It.

Train Of Thought

Writers Speak Stench.

It Is Not Necessary To Accept Everything As True, One Must Only Accept It As Necessary.' 'a Melancholy Conclusion,' Said K. 'it Turns Lying Into A Universal Principle.

Self-control Means Wanting To Be Effective At Some Random Point In The Infinite Radiations Of My Spiritual Existence.

Writing Is A Deeper Sleep Than Death. Just As One Wouldn't Pull A Corpse From Its Grave, I Can't Be Dragged From My Desk At Night.

Was He An Animal, That Music Could Move Him So? He Felt As If The Way To The Unknown Nourishment He Longed For Were Coming To Light.

Ours Is A Lost Generation, It May Be, But It Is More Blameless Than Those Earlier Generations.

When One Has Once Accepted And Absorbed Evil, It No Longer Demands The Unfitness Of The Means. The Ulterior Motives With Which Youabsorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil.... Evil Is Whatever Distracts. Evil Knows Of The Good, But Good Does Not Know Of Evil. Knowledge Of Oneself Is Something Only Evil Has. One Means That Evil Has Is The Dialogue.... One Cannot Pay Evil In Installments--and One Always Keeps On Trying To.

Like Tired Dogs They Stand There, Because They Use Up All Their Strength In Remaining Upright In One's Memory.

Just Because Your Doctor Has A Name For Your Condition, Doesn't Mean He Knows What It Is.

In Man's Struggle Against The World, Bet On The World.

I Made The Remark That I Don't Avoid People In Order To Live Quietly, But Rather In Order To Be Able To Die Quietly.

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.

World Suffering

Marrying, Founding A Family, Accepting All The Children That Come, Supporting Them In This Insecure World, And Perhaps Even Guiding Them A Little, Is, I Am Convinced, The Utmost A Human Being Can Succeed In Doing At All.

There Is A Down-and-outness Under True Knowledge And A Childlike Happy Arising From It.

There Are Two Cardinal Human Sins Out Of Which All Others Derive, Deviate, And Dissipate: Impatience And Lassitude (or Perhaps Nonchalance). On Account Of Impatience They Are Driven Out Of Paradise; On Account Of Lassitude Or Nonchalance They Do Not Return. Perhaps, However, Only One Main Sense Of Sin Is Given: Impatience. On Account Of Impatience They Are Driven Out, On Account Of Impatience They Do Not Turn Back.

Evil Is Whatever Distracts.

Writing Is Utter Solitude, The Descent Into The Cold Abyss Of Oneself.

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.

Everything You Say Is Boring And Incomprehensible, But That Alone Doesn't Make It True.

Trending Author

Jurgen Klinsmann

Ferdinand De Saussure

Marian Anderson

Nursultan Nazarbayev

Category