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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.

-Franz Kafka

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One Of The First

Franz Kafka

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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.

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

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

I Want In Fact More Of You. In My Mind I Am Dressing You With Light; I Am Wrapping You Up In Blankets Of Complete Acceptance And Then I Give Myself To You. I Long For You; I Who Usually Long Without Longing, As Though I Am Unconscious And Absorbed In Neutrality And Apathy, Really, Utterly Long For Every Bit Of You.

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

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

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

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

It's Only Because Of Their Stupidity That They're Able To Be So Sure Of Themselves.

Always First Draw Fresh Breath After Outbursts Of Vanity And Complacency.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Anyone Who Loves His Neighbor Within The Limits Of The World Is Doing No More And No Less Injustice Than Someone Who Loves Himself Within The Limits Of The World.

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

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.

Religions Get Lost As People Do.

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.

Writers Speak Stench.

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.

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

Human Relations

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

A Non-writing Writer Is A Monster Courting Insanity.

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

Either The World Is So Tiny Or We Are Enormous; In Either Case, We Fill It Completely.

The State We Find Ourselves In Is Sinful Quite Independent Of Guilt.

Everyone Carries A Room About Inside Him. This Fact Can Even Be Proved By Means Of The Sense Of Hearing. If Someone Walks Fast And One Pricks Up One’s Ears And Listens, Say In The Night, When Everything Round About Is Quiet, One Hears, For Instance, The Rattling Of A Mirror Not Quite Firmly Fastened To The Wall.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Am Always Trying To Convey Something That Can’t Be Conveyed, To Explain Something Which Is Inexplicable, To Tell About Something I Have In My Bones, Something Which Can Be Expressed Only In The Bones.

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

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

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.

I Like To Make Use Of What I Know

That's How It Will Be, Except That In Reality, Both Today And Later, One Will Stand There With A Palpable Body And A Real Head, A Real Forehead, That Is, For Smiting On With One's Hand.

There's An Infinite Amount Of Hope But Not For Us.

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.

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.

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

There Sat I, A Faded Being, Under Faded Leaves.

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

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.

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.

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

World Suffering

The Bible Is A Sanctum; The World, Sputum.

Kill Me, Or You Are A Murderer.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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Only Our Concept Of Time Makes It Possible For Us To Speak Of The Day Of Judgment By That Name In Reality It Is A Summary Court In Perpetual Session.

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

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster

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

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

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

Writing [is] A Form Of Prayer.

From The True Antagonist Illimitable Courage Is Transmitted To You.

I Carry The Bars Within Me.

Youth Is Happy Because It Has The Ability To See Beauty. Anyone Who Keeps The Ability To See Beauty Never Grows Old.

Inspirational Birthday

One Reads In Order To Ask Questions

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They Did Not Know What We Can Now Guess At, Contemplating The Course Of History: That Change Begins In The Soul Before It Appears In Ordinary Existence.

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.

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.

It Is Strange How Little Sharpsightedness Women Possess; They Only Notice Whether They Please, Then Whether They Arouse Pity, And Finally, Whether You Look For Compassion From Them. That Is All; Come To Think Of It, It May Even Be Enough, Generally Speaking.

I Am Away From Home And Must Always Write Home, Even If Any Home Of Mine Has Long Since Floated Away Into Eternity.

The Diabolical Sometimes Assumes The Aspect Of The Good, Or Even Embodies Itself Completely In Its Form. If This Remains Concealedfrom Me, I Am Of Course Defeated, For This Good Is More Tempting Than The Genuine Good.

The Meaning Of Life Is That It Stops.

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.

The True Word Leads; The Untrue Misleads.

As Far As I Have Seen, At School...they Aimed At Blotting Out One's Individuality.

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

Follow Your Most Intense Obsessions Mercilessly.

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

And In That Recurring Dream, I Found Myself Trapped In Some Sort Of Gigantic Game Of Which I Was Unfamiliar With The Rules; Lost In A Labyrinthine Town Of Dark And Damp, Criss-crossing Streets, Ambiguous Characters Of Uncertain Authority Having No Idea Of Why I Was There Nor What I Had To Do, And Where The First Sign Of The Beginning Of Understanding Was The Wish To Die.

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

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.

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.

The Right Understanding Of Any Matter And A Misunderstanding Of The Same Matter Do Not Wholly Exclude Each Other.

Misunderstanding

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

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

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.

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

I’m Doing Badly, I’m Doing Well; Whichever You Prefer.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

First Impressions Are Always Unreliable.

First Impression

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.

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.

No," Said The Priest, "you Don't Need To Accept Everything As True, You Only Have To Accept It As Necessary." "depressing View," Said K. "the Lie Made Into The Rule Of The World.

The Whole Visible World Is Perhaps Nothing More Than The Rationalization Of A Man Who Wants To Find Peace For A Moment.

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

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?

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.

I Don't Know Who The Great Lawyers Are, And I Presume You Can't Get To Them. I Know Of No Case Where It Can Be Said For Certain That They Took Part. They Defend Some People, But You Can't Get Them To Do That Through Your Own Efforts, They Only Defend The Ones They Want To Defend. But I Assume A Case They Take On Must Have Progressed Beyond The Lower Court. It's Better Not To Think Of Them At All, Otherwise You'll Find The Consultations With The Other Lawyers, Their Advice And Their Assistance, Extremely Disgusting And Useless.

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.

In The Struggle Between Yourself And The World Second The World.

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.

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

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

But What If All The Tranquility, All The Comfort, All The Contentment Were Now To Come To A Horrifying End?

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

If All Responsibility Is Imposed On You, Then You May Want To Exploit The Moment And Want To Be Overwhelmed By The Responsibility;yet If You Try, You Will Notice That Nothing Was Imposed On You, But That You Are Yourself This Responsibility.

Going To Pieces. To Go To Pieces So Pointlessly And Unnecessarily.

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

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.

What Do I Have In Common With Jews? I Don't Even Have Anything In Common With Myself.

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

The Cruelty Of Death Lies In The Fact That It Brings The Real Sorrow Of The End, But Not The End. The Greatest Cruelty Of Death: An Apparent End Causes A Real Sorrow. Our Salvation Is Death, But Not This One.

What Is Gayer Than Believing In A Household God?

No One Can Crave What Truly Harms Him.

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head. But How Free Myself And Free It Without Being Torn To Pieces. And A Thousand Times Rather Be Torn To Pieces Than Retain It In Me Or Bury It. That, Indeed, Is Why I Am Here, That Is Quite Clear To Me.

When One Has Once Accepted And Absorbed Evil, It No Longer Demands To Be Believed.

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.

Writing Means Revealing Oneself To Excess.

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

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.

You Are So Vulnerably Haunting. Your Eeriness Is Terrifyingly Irresistible.

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

There Are Only Two Things. Truth And Lies. Truth Is Indivisible, Hence It Cannot Recognize Itself; Anyone Who Wants To Recognize It Has To Be A Lie.

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.

Work As Joy, Inaccessible To The Psychologists.

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.

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.

Death Confronts Us Not Unlike The Historical Battle Scene That Hangs On The Wall Of The Classroom. It Is Our Task To Obscure Or Quite Obliterate The Picture By Our Deeds While We Are Still In This World.

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

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.

Anything That Has Real And Lasting Value Is Always A Gift From Within.

I Am In Chains. Don't Touch My Chains.

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.

Writing Is A Sweet, Wonderful Reward.

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

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.

My Guiding Principle Is This: Guilt Is Never To Be Doubted.

Guiding Principles

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

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

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

Our Art Is A Way Of Being Dazzled By Truth: The Light On The Grotesquely Grimacing Retreating Face Is True, And Nothing Else.

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

Love Is A Drama Of Contradictions.

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

Nothing Is As Deceptive As A Photograph.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Do Not See The World At All; I Invent It.

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.

The Worries That Are The Burden Of Which The Privileged Person Makes An Excuse In Dealing With The Oppressed Person Are In Fact The Worries About Preserving His Privileged Condition.

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

Now I Can Look At You In Peace; I Don't Eat You Any More.

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

The Truth Is Always An Abyss.

Anyone Who Renounces The World Must Love All Men, For He Renounces Their World Too. He Thus Begins To Have Some Inkling Of The True Nature Of Man, Which Cannot But Be Loved, Always Assuming That One Is Its Peer.

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.

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.

Evil Is Whatever Distracts.

All Knowledge, The Totality Of All Questions And Answers, Is Contained In The Dog.

Questions And Answers

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.

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.

Sometimes I Think I Can Expiate All My Past And Future Sins Through The Aching Of My Bones.

Utterance Does Not In Principle Mean A Weakening Of Conviction--that Would Not Be Anything To Be Deplored--but A Weakness Of Conviction.

We Photograph Things In Order To Drive Them Out Of Our Minds. My Stories Are A Way Of Shutting My Eyes.

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

One Of The Most Effective Means Of Seduction That Evil Has Is The Challenge To Struggle. It Is Like The Struggle With Women, Whichends In Bed. A Married Man's True Deviations From The Path Of Virtue Are, Rightly Understood, Never Gay.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

. . . The Books We Need Are The Kind That Act Upon Us Like A Misfortune, That Make Us Suffer Like The Death Of Someone We Love More Than Ourselves, That Make Us Feel As Though We Were On The Verge Of Suicide, Or Lost In A Forest Remote From All Human Habitation-a Book Should Serve As An Axe For The Frozen Sea Within Us.

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.

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.

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.

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