Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafkawas a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung", Der Process, and Das Schloss. The term Kafkaesque has entered the English...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 July 1883
CityPrague, Czech Republic
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.
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.
You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.
In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.
One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak
The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.
The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.
Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely.
The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.