Franz Kafka

but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

• 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... (cont.)

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

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

• Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

• Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

• There is hope, but not for us.

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

• Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

• 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.

...But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

• In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before...(cont.)

• Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

...finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony.

• Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; (cont.)

• In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

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

... perhaps marriage and a martyr's death.

• Celibacy and suicide are a similar levels of understanding, suicide and a martyr's death not so by any means, (cont.)

• Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.