Franz Kafka

Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing, which cannot be exaggerated. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression of everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true.

Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most — you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.

"Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true."

"Oh well, memories,” said I. “Yes, even remembering in itself is sad, yet how much more its object! Don’t let yourself in for things like that, it’s not for you and it’s not for me. It only weakens one’s present position without strengthening the former one — nothing is more obvious — quite apart from the fact that the former one doesn’t need strengthening."

How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community, sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs, I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair.

A man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.

Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.

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.

'...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.In the Cathedral

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.