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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.

-Franz Kafka

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Leopards Break Into The

Franz Kafka

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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.

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

World Suffering

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.

Some Deny The Existence Of Misery By Pointing To The Sun; He Denies The Existence Of The Sun By Pointing To Misery.

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

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

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

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.

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

Writing Is A Sweet, Wonderful Reward.

One Can Disintegrate The World By Means Of Very Strong Light. For Weak Eyes The World Becomes Solid, For Still Weaker Eyes It Seems To Develop Fists, For Eyes Weaker Still It Becomes Shamefaced And Smashes Anyone Who Dares To Gaze Upon It.

People Label Themselves With All Sorts Of Adjectives. I Can Only Pronounce Myself As 'nauseatingly Miserable Beyond Repair'.

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

Religions Get Lost As People Do.

So Eager Are Our People To Obliterate The Present.

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.

I Can Love Only What I Can Place So High Above Me That I Cannot Reach It.

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

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

Anybody Who Preserves The Ability To Recognize Beauty Will Never Get Old.

May I Kiss You Then? On This Miserable Paper? I Might As Well Open The Window And Kiss The Night Air.

Two Tasks At The Beginning Of Your Life: To Narrow Your Orbit More And More, And Ever And Again To Check Whether You Are Not In Hiding Somewhere Outside Your Orbit.

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

Human Relations

Productivity Is Being Able To Do Things That You Were Never Able To Do Before.

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.

The True Word Leads; The Untrue Misleads.

Slept, Awoke, Slept, Awoke, Miserable Life.

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

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

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

Most Men Are Not Wicked... They Are Sleep-walkers, Not Evil Evildoers.

I Never Imagined That So Many Days Would Ultimately Make Such A Small Life.

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.

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

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

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.

Follow Your Most Intense Obsessions Mercilessly.

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

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.

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

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?

If Something Good Has Lost Its Way Into You, It Will Make Its Escape Overnight. I Know You.

From The True Antagonist Illimitable Courage Is Transmitted To You.

No One Can Crave What Truly Harms Him.

The More Horses You Yoke The Quicker Everything Will Go - Not The Rending Of The Block From Its Foundation, Which Is Impossible, But The Snapping Of The Traces And With That The Gay And Empty Journey.

No Sooner Said Than Done - So Acts Your Man Of Worth.

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.

Adam's First Domestic Pet After The Expulsion From Paradise Was The Serpent.

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.

All I Am Is Literature, And I Am Not Able Or Willing To Be Anything Else.

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

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

And I Leave My Post Of Observation And Find I Have Had Enough Of This Outside Life; I Feel That There Is Nothing More That I Can Learn Here, Either Now Or At Any Time. And I Long To Say A Last Goodbye To Everything Up Here, To Go Down Into My Burrow Never To Return Again, Let Things Take Their Course, And Not Try To Retard Them With My Profitless Vigils.

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

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.

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

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

Ignorance Is Bliss

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.

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

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

I Have No Memory For Things I Have Learned, Nor Things I Have Read, Nor Things Experienced Or Heard, Neither For People Nor Events; I Feel That I Have Experienced Nothing, Learned Nothing, That I Actually Know Less Than The Average Schoolboy, And That What I Do Know Is Superficial, And That Every Second Question Is Beyond Me. I Am Incapable Of Thinking Deliberately; My Thoughts Run Into A Wall. I Can Grasp The Essence Of Things In Isolation, But I Am Quite Incapable Of Coherent, Unbroken Thinking. I Can't Even Tell A Story Properly; In Fact, I Can Scarcely Talk.

Love Is A Drama Of Contradictions.

Torment Yourself As Little As Possible, Then You'll Torment Me Less.

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

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.

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

Everything Is Deception: Seeking The Minimum Of Illusion, Keeping Within The Ordinary Limitations, Seeking The Maximum. In The First Case One Cheats The Good, By Trying To Make It Too Easy For Oneself To Get It, And The Evil By Imposing All Too Unfavorable Conditions Of Warfare On It. In The Second Case One Cheats The Good By Keeping As Aloof From It As Possible, And The Evil By Hoping To Make It Powerless Through Intensifying It To The Utmost.

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.

We All Have Wings, But They Have Not Been Of Any Avail To Us And If We Could Tear Them Off, We Would Do So.

Books Are A Narcotic.

When K. Looked At The Castle, Often It Seemed To Him As If He Were Observing Someone Who Sat Quietly There In Front Of Him Gazing, Not Lost In Thought And So Oblivious Of Everything, But Free And Untroubled, As If He Were Alone With Nobody To Observe Him, And Yet Must Notice That He Was Observed, And All The Same Remained With His Calm Not Even Slightly Disturbed; And Really - One Did Not Know Whether It Was Cause Or Effect - The Gaze Of The Observer Could Not Remain Concentrated There, But Slid Away.

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

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.

Do Not Waste Your Time Looking For An Obstacle - Maybe There Is None.

It Is Often Safer To Be In Chains Than To Be Free.

Evil Is The Radiation Of The Human Consciousness In Certain Transitional Positions. It Is Not Actually The Sensual World That Is Amere Appearance; What Is So Is The Evil Of It, Which, Admittedly, Is What Constitutes The Sensual World In Our Eyes.

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

It Would Have Been So Pointless To Kill Himself That, Even If He Had Wanted To, The Pointlessness Would Have Made Him Unable.

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

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

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

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.

There Is A Goal But No Way; What We Call The Way Is Mere Wavering.

Work As Joy, Inaccessible To The Psychologists.

The History Of The World, As It Is Written And Handed Down By Word Of Mouth, Often Fails Us Completely; But Man's Intuitive Capacity, Though It Often Misleads, Does Lead, Does Not Ever Abandon One.

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

Human Nature, Essentially Changeable, As Unstable As The Dust, Can Endure No Restraint; If It Binds Itself It Soon Begins To Tear Madly At Its Bonds, Until It Rends Everything Asunder, The Wall, The Bonds, And Its Very Self.

The Delights Of This Life Are Not Its Own, But Our Fear Of The Ascent Into A Higher Life; The Torments Of This Life Are Not Its Own, But Our Self-torment Because Of That Fear.

Time Is Short, My Strength Is Limited, The Office Is A Horror, The Apartment Is Noisy, And If A Pleasant, Straightforward Life Is Not Possible, Then One Must Try To Wriggle Through By Subtle Manoeuvres.

I Believe That We Should Read Only Those Books That Bite And Sting Us. If A Book We Are Reading Does Not Rouse Us With A Blow To The Head, Then Why Read It?

Even The Merest Gesture Is Holy If It Is Filled With Faith.

I Like To Make Use Of What I Know

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.

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.

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

Not Everyone Can See The Truth, But He Can Be It.

The Meaning Of Life Is That It Stops.

What Is Gayer Than Believing In A Household God?

Sometimes I'd Like To Stuff All Jews (myself Included) Into The Drawer Of A Laundry Basket. Then Open It To See If They've Suffocated

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.

I Answer One Of Your Letters, Then Lie In Bed In Apparent Calm, But My Heart Beats Through My Entire Body And Is Conscious Only Of You. I Belong To You; There Is Really No Other Way Of Expressing It, And That Is Not Strong Enough.

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

The Truth Is Always An Abyss. One Must — As In A Swimming Pool — Dare To Dive From The Quivering Springboard Of Trivial Everyday Experience And Sink Into The Depths, In Order To Later Rise Again — Laughing And Fighting For Breath — To The Now Doubly Illuminated Surface Of Things.

Writer Speaks A Stench.

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.

I’m Tired, Can’t Think Of Anything And Want Only To Lay My Face In Your Lap, Feel Your Hand On My Head And Remain Like That Through All Eternity.

I Am Constantly Trying To Communicate Something Incommunicable, To Explain Something Inexplicable, To Tell About Something I Only Feel In My Bones And Which Can Only Be Experienced In Those Bones. Basically It Is Nothing Other Than This Fear We Have So Often Talked About, But Fear Spread To Everything, Fear Of The Greatest As Of The Smallest, Fear, Paralyzing Fear Of Pronouncing A Word, Although This Fear May Not Only Be Fear But Also A Longing For Something Greater Than All That Is Fearful.

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

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

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.

Kill Me, Or You Are A Murderer.

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

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

If The Book We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, As With A Fist Hammering On Our Skull, Why Then Do We Read? So That It Shall Make Us Happy? Good God, We Should Also Be Happy If We Had No Books, And Such Books As Make Us Happy We Could, If Need Be, Write Ourselves. But What We Must Have Are Those Books Which Come Upon Us Like Ill Fortune, And Distress Us Deeply, Like The Death Of One We Love Better Than Ourselves; Like Suicide. A Book Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Sea Frozen Inside Us.

There Was Once A Community Of Scoundrels, That Is To Say, They Were Not Scoundrels, But Ordinary People.

The Man In Ecstasy And The Man Drowning - Both Throw Up Their Arms. The First To Signify Harmony, The Second To Signify Strife With The Elements.

He Is A Free And Secure Citizen Of The World Because He Is On A Chain That Is Long Enough To Allow Him Access To All Parts Of The Earth, And Yet Not So Long That He Could Be Swept Over The Edge Of It.

Palestine Needs Earth, But It Does Not Need Lawyers.

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

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.

The Existence Of The Writer Is An Argument Against The Existence Of The Soul, For The Soul Has Obviously Taken Flight From The Real Ego, But Not Improved Itself, Only Become A Writer.

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.

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

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

Dread Of Night. Dread Of Not-night.

Alas," Said The Mouse, "the Whole World Is Growing Smaller Every Day. At The Beginning It Was So Big That I Was Afraid, I Kept Running And Running, And I Was Glad When I Saw Walls Far Away To The Right And Left, But These Long Walls Have Narrowed So Quickly That I Am In The Last Chamber Already, And There In The Corner Stands The Trap That I Must Run Into." "you Only Need To Change Your Direction," Said The Cat, And Ate It Up.

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 Notion Of The Infinite Expanse And Copiousness Of The Cosmos Is The Result Of The Mixture, Carried To The Extreme Limit, Of Laborious Creation And Free Self-determination.

In A Certain Sense The Good Is Comfortless.

This Tremendous World I Have Inside Of Me. How To Free Myself, And This World, Without Tearing Myself To Pieces. And Rather Tear Myself To A Thousand Pieces Than Be Buried With This World Within Me.

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

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.

If This Is What You Came For, Then I Didn't Send For You. Kafka (note To Himself In Journal)

We Were Created In Order To Live In Paradise, And Paradise Was Ordained To Serve Us. What Was Ordained For Us Has Been Changed; It Is Not Said That This Has Also Happened With What Was Ordained For Paradise.

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.

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.

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

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.

All Science Is Methodolgy With Regard To The Absolute. Therefore, There Need Be No Fear Of The Unequivocally Methodological. It Isa Husk, But Not More Than Everything Except The One.

Because Of Impatience We Were Driven Out [of Paradise]; Because Of Impatience We Cannot Return.

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

Martyrs Do Not Underrate The Body, They Allow It To Be Elevated On The Cross. In This They Are At One With Their Antagonists.

Just Think How Many Thoughts A Blanket Smothers While One Lies Alone In Bed, And How Many Unhappy Dreams It Keeps Warm.

I Carry The Bars Within Me.

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.

I Wanted To Escape The Unrest, To Shut Out The Voices Around Me And Within Me, So I Write.

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.

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.

One Has Just Been Sent Out As A Biblical Dove, Has Found Nothing Green, And Slips Back Into The Darkness Of The Ark

I Do Not Speak As I Think, I Do Not Think As I Should, And So It All Goes On In Helpless Darkness.

He Who Does Not Answer The Questions Has Passed The Test.

There They Lay, But Not In The Forgetfulness Of The Previous Night. She Was Seeking And He Was Seeking, They Raged And Contorted Their Faces And Bored Their Heads Into Each Others Bosom In The Urgency Of Seeking Something, And Their Embraces And Their Tossing Limbs Did Not Avail To Make Them Forget, But Only Reminded Them Of What They Sought

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.

April 27. Incapable Of Living With People, Of Speaking. Complete Immersion In Myself, Thinking Of Myself. Apathetic, Witless, Fearful. I Have Nothing To Say To Anyone - Never.

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

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.

There's No Quiet Place Here On Earth For Our Love, Not In The Village And Not Anywhere Else, So I Picture A Grave, Deep And Narrow, In Which We Embrace As If Clamped Together, I Bury My Face Against You, You Yours Against Me, And No One Will Ever See Us.

The Ulterior Motives With Which You Absorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil.

The Door Could Not Be Heard Slamming; They Had Probably Left It Open, As Is The Custom In Homes Where A Great Misfortune Has Occurred.

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.

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

The Experience Of Life Consists Of The Experience Which The Spirit Has Of Itself In Matter And As Matter, In Mind And As Mind, In Emotion, As Emotion, Etc.

Maybe Innocence Makes Its Way Easiest Through The Elemental Chaos Of This World.

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.

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.

The Limited Circle Is Pure.

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.

This Perversion Of The Truth, Familiar To The Artist Though It Was, Always Unnerved Him Afresh And Proved Too Much For Him. What Was A Consequence Of The Premature Ending Of His Fast Was Here Presented As The Cause Of It! To Fight Against This Lack Of Understanding, Against A Whole World Of Nonunderstanding, Was Impossible.

The Fact That Our Task Is Exactly Commensurate With Our Life Gives It The Appearance Of Being Infinite.

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

Logic May Indeed Be Unshakeable, But It Cannot Withstand A Man Who Is Determined To Live.

He Is Terribly Afraid Of Dying Because He Hasn’t Yet Lived.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Am Free And That Is Why I Am Lost.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Observer Of The Soul Cannot Penetrate Into The Soul, But There Doubtless Is A Margin Where He Comes Into Contact With It. Recognition Of This Contact Is The Fact That Even The Soul Does Not Know Of Itself. Hence It Must Remain Unknown. That Would Be Sad Only If There Were Anything Apart From The Soul, But There Is Nothing Else.

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

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 Am In Chains. Don't Touch My Chains.

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

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.

Life's Splendor Forever Lies In Wait About Each One Of Us In All Its Fullness, But Veiled From View, Deep Down, Invisible, Far Off. It Is There, Though, Not Hostile, Not Reluctant, Not Deaf. If You Summon It By The Right Word, By Its Right Name, It Will Come.

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?

The Crows Maintain That A Single Crow Could Destroy The Heavens. There Is No Doubt Of That, But It Proves Nothing Against The Heavens, For Heaven Simply Means: The Impossibility Of Crows.

I, However, Cannot Force Myself To Use "meat Drugs" To Cheat On My Loneliness.

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.

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.

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

I No Longer Know If I Wish To Drown Myself In Love, Vodka Or The Sea.

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

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Hillary Clinton

Russell T Davies

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