What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.

Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

but that is how the guilty speak

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

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...

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Books are a narcotic

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

Writer speaks a stench.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along.

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...

They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he’ll never see anything.

Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es...

I am, because my little dog knows I am.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

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...

You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation...

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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...

Writing is prayer.

I am forever fettered to myself […] and that’s what I must try to live with.

É bom quando nossa consciência sofre grandes ferimentos, pois isso a torna mais sensível a cada estímulo. Penso que devemos ler apenas livros que nos ferem, que nos afligem. Se o livro que estamos lendo...

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!

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...

Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading...

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

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

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

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.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all...

However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

My ”fear”… is my substance, and probably the best part of me.