thinglets: The Tweets of Franz Kafka

  • A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. 
  • 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. 
  • Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. 
  • Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. 
  • Evil is whatever distracts. 
  • From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached. 
  • God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. 
  • I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. 
  • Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues. 
  • If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow? 
  • If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted. 
  • In the fight between you and the world, back the world. 
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer. 
  • One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory. 
  • Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before. 
  • So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. 
  • Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. 
  • 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. 
  • Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery. 
  • We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so. 
  • Writers speak stench. 
  • You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid. 
  • Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.