Kafka Philosophy Quotes

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.” Hoshino looked up, mouth half open, and gazed at her face. “What’s that?” “Henri Bergson,” she replied, licking the semen from the tip of his penis. [...] “I can’t think of anything special, but could you quote some more of that philosophy stuff? I don’t know why, but it might keep me from coming so quick. Otherwise I’ll lose it pretty fast.

A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that ‘observes’ to reason that ‘acts’. That’s what critical.

At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating.

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs thus to assemble together, I want the bones to crack open under the pressure of their collective preparedness, and then I want to dismiss them to the ordinary life they love, while all by myself, quite alone, I lap up the marrow. That sounds monstrous, almost as if I wanted to feed on the marrow, not merely of bone, but of the whole canine race itself. But it is only a metaphor. The marrow that I am discussing here is no food; on the contrary, it is a poison.

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

Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt, das Positive ist uns schon gegeben.

Wenn man einmal das Böse bei sich aufgenommen hat, verlangt es nicht mehr, daß man ihm glaube.

fleas are like a bad habit—awfully hard to get rid of once you get them

If anything in Kafka's theology can be called Jewish, it is his virtual lack of any concept of 'Nature'. There is in a sense no 'Nature' in Genesis either, since the world is created for man. There may, however, be more modern reasons for the absence of this concept in Kafka's case. His position here resembles that of Heidegger, whose Existential philosophy represents an attack on Naturalism (while adopting its atheistic presuppositions) and therefore finds no place for nature as such, but only for the world in so far as the world exists 'for human existence', i.e., as 'material'. Heidegger and Kafka are radically original in that aspect of their thought which does away with the natural and the supernatural at the same time. In Kafka the absence of Nature is due to the fact that for him what might be termed the 'institutionalization' of the world is total, indeed totalitarian. There is no room in it for that unoccupied and unused space beyond the sphere of human needs which we are in the habit of revering or enjoying as 'Nature'. Yet there is truth in Kafka's omission of Nature from his world, to the extent that the mechanized civilization of to-day may be described as appropriating and exploiting everything there is as raw material or fuel, and destroying whatever cannot be exploited—even human beings.

Все человеческие ошибки суть нетерпение, преждевременный отказ от методичности, мнимая сосредоточенность на мнимом деле.

The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.

Once Kafka came to regard any philosophy as nothing more than a system of rules to be enforced, a dogma both bigger and smaller than himself, he withdrew from it.

Lo que sea que estés buscando no va a llegar de la manera que te lo esperas.

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 nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück.

Parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. We lose in parable the moment we pin things down to an accessible meaning.

his understanding of transference in the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He is commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis" and his work has been highly influential-—popularizing such notions as the unconscious, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism — while also making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as literature (Kafka), film, Marxist and feminist theories, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology. However, his theories remain controversial and widely disputed. Source: Wikipedia

Dostoevsky's...typically Russian emphasis on man as a collective being leads logically to his belief in our all-guilt; we are, again, in some mysterious manner, guilty of everybody's sins...Our own deeds, good or bad, are nothing but pebbles in the river of life that will be carried on and on until they somehow touch our remotest fellow man.

A shelf farther back contains general humanities—collections of Japanese literature, world literature, and individual writers, classics, philosophy, drama, art history, sociology, history, biography, geography. . . . When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages—a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.

I go into the high-ceilinged stacks and wander among the shelves, searching for a book that looks interesting. Magnificent thick beams run across the ceiling of the room, and gentle early-summer sunlight is shining through the open window, the chatter of birds in the garden filtering in. The books in the shelves in front of me, sure enough, are just like Oshima said, mainly books of Japanese poetry. Tanka and haiku, essays on poetry, biographies of various poets. There are also a lot of books on local history. A shelf farther back contains general humanities―collections of Japanese literature, world literature, and individual writers, classics, philosophy, drama, art history, sociology, history, biography, geography.... When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages―a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

All kinds of things are happening to me." I begin. ,,Some I choose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other any more. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense od who I am. It's as if my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch. Oshima gazes deep into m eyes. "Listen, Kafka. What you are experiencing now is the motif od many Greek tragedies. Man does not chose fate. Fate chooses man. That is the basic world view of Greek drama. And the sense od tragedy - according to Aristotle - somes, ironically enough, not drom the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I am getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a Great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of lazines or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.

Есть два главных человеческих греха, из которых вытекают все прочие: нетерпение и небрежность. Из-за нетерпения люди изгнаны из рая, из-за небрежности они не возвращаются туда. А может быть, есть только один главный грех: нетерпение. Из-за нетерпения изгнаны, из-за нетерпения не возвращаются.

The Strugglers" He was born on a Friday. And it was raining that day. He still does not know whether the Gods were happy or sad at his arriving on earth. He saw the world. He saw sadness. He saw misery. He saw the struggle of his dad and mom. They both struggled to give a good life to their children. He started becoming serious in life. He started winning awards in academics and in quiz competitions to begin with. Then he tried essay competitions and debates. His sole aim was to win awards to make his parents feel proud of him. He wanted to become an IAS officer to make his family (uncles, aunts, cousins) feel proud of him. He came to Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services. He thought he will do a job and not be dependent on his parents, and still clear the Civil Services. It did not happen. He lost out on becoming a Civil Servant of the people. He tried a few odds jobs. He eventually became a Teacher, Poet, and Writer. His inspirations to writing - his Mom who manages to write Poetry even now along with her struggles of life, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Franz Kafka, Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, and all the other poets, artists, writers, and strugglers in Life.

The Strugglers" He was born on a Friday. And it was raining that day. He still does not know whether the Gods were happy or sad at his arriving on earth. He saw the world. He saw sadness. He saw misery. He saw the struggle of his dad and mom. They both struggled to give a good life to their children. He started becoming serious in life. He started winning awards in academics and in quiz competitions to begin with. Then he tried essay competitions and debates. His sole aim was to win awards to make his parents feel proud of him. He wanted to become an IAS officer to make his family (uncles, aunts, cousins) feel proud of him. He came to Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services. He thought he will do a job and not be dependent on his parents, and still clear the Civil Services. It did not happen. He lost out on becoming a Civil Servant of the people. He tried a few odds jobs. He eventually became a Teacher, Poet, and Writer. His inspirations to writing - his Mom who manages to writer Poetry even now along with her struggles of life, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Franz Kafka, Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, and all the other poets, artists, writers, and strugglers in Life.

Como si hubiese huido de mí todo lo que he poseído, y no hubiese de satisfacerme si regresase - Franz Kafka

There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that then they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.

Kafka, Tolstoy, Plath, Hemingway, Neruda, and Rilke are all masters of writing. They are history. Read the writings of the present generation poets & writers, before they become history!

Don't fall in love with me. I am not one entity. I am a multitude of phantasmagorical entities. I am the poet. I am the writer. I am the wanderer. I am the philosopher. I am the king. I am the beggar. I am the drifter. I am the hunter. I am the creator. I am the creation. I worship my gods - Bukowski, Kafka, Hemingway, Rand & Plath. I listen to my gods - Beethoven, Mozart, & Tchaikovsky! Don't fall in love with me! I am not one entity. I am a multitude of phastamagorical entities.

A Kafka ya se le presenta la carta como un medio de comunicación inhumano. Este autor cree que la carta ha traído al mundo una terrible perturbación de las almas. [...] A su juicio, la carta cultiva el contacto con los espíritus. Los besos escritos no llegan a su destino. Los fantasmas los cogen y se los tragan por el camino. [...] Después de la carta vinieron el teléfono y la telegrafía. Kafka saca la conclusión: "Los fantasmas no se morirán de hambre y nosotros, en cambio, pereceremos".

And perhaps he had made no mistake at all, his name really was called, it having been the teacher's intention to make the rewarding of the best student at the same time a punishment for the worst one.

If they could and if they dared, they would long ago have enticed the animal to come yet closer to them, so that they might be more frightened than ever. But in reality the animal is not at all eager to approach them, as long as it is left alone it takes just as little notice of them as of the men, and probably what it would like best would be to remain in the hiding place where it lives in the periods between the services, evidently in some hole in the wall that we have not yet discovered.

Nicht durch seine Fehler, sondern durch seine Qualitäten wird der Mensch in die große Tragödie hineingezogen.

Im Kampf zwischen dir und der Welt sekundiere der Welt.

kabhi kabhi mere dil mei khayal aata hai, aur aake chala jaata hai *sad pikachu face*

The crux of Kafka’s work seems to be the tension created by this confrontation with the absurd—a conflict in which a character’s efforts, reasoning, and sense of the world are met with an inescapable senselessness. The Kafkaesque quality is found in the characters’ impossible struggles to make sense of what’s happening to them and how to resolve their situations, wherein success is both impossible and, in the end, ultimately pointless. And yet, they try anyway.

He was, in the eyes of his father, an inadequate disappointment—and yet, in the eyes of history, he is an immensely important individual. One can only wonder how many individuals like Kafka have walked and continue to walk this earth, completely disconnected or restricted from ever seeing who they really are or could be. How many Kafkas have lived and died without ever sharing their voice with the world; voices that would have changed it forever? How many people never know who they’ll be after they’re gone?