Franz Kafka Quotes

For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.

Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.

Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further influences that reality. Even time itself is not exempted from biocentrism.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector.

What is this universe but name and form?

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way?

I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth.

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.

The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; Contrariwise, a diamond splits The prospect into idle bits That none can piece together.

Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way to make heads or tails of it is going through intuition.

Transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives.

The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

It’s like, everything really is two ways, the way we all pretend it is and the way it really is

The way you see your life shapes your life.

The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut. You don't really know what it's about until you bite into it. And then, just when you decided it's good, you drop a big glob of jelly on your best T-shirt.

The most certain way to make a man your enemy is to tell him you esteem him such.