Inspirational Quotations by Franz Kafka (#639)

Today marks the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883–1924,) the German-language writer from Prague who is considered a major figure of 20th-century literature.

Kafka described himself as a “peevish, miserable, silent, discontented, and sickly” man. His life was tragic. He grew up terrified of his tyrannical father. He graduated from law school; his job at an insurance company exhausted him. He suffered many mental illnesses and felt tormented by guilt and anxiety. He did not publish much of his written work during his lifetime, had a few love affairs but never got married, and died of tuberculosis at age 40.

Kafka wrote surreal, dark, pessimistic, and disturbing short stories and novels. His fictional world’s repressive nature inspired the adjective “Kafkaesque,” used to describe absurd, gloomy, bizarre, eerie, or nightmarish objects.

Kafka’s works feature strange and dreadful incidents in innocent people’s lives. In his most famous work Metamorphosis (1915, German: Die Verwandlung,) a young man dies out of guilt-ridden despair after being transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect. The Judgment (1916, Das Urteil) is about a son who unquestioningly throws himself off a bridge after his father orders him to commit suicide. In the Penal Colony (1919, In der Strafkolonie) is about a machine that kills criminals by inscribing the nature of their offense on their skin.

Kafka was barely known during his lifetime, but attained great posthumous fame thanks to his close friend Max Brod. Just before death, Kafka asked Brod to destroy all unpublished manuscripts. Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes, made significant changes to three manuscripts, gave them better endings, and published The Trial (1925, Der Prozess) Amerika (1927,) and The Castle (1926, Das Schloss.) Only in the 1970s were the originals of these three novels published.

Inspirational Quotations by Franz Kafka

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

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.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’ s every word.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)