mug > mug's Quotes

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”
― André Malraux

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo - If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Spinoza

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Ethos anthropoi daimon--a man's character is his fate.”
― Heraclitus

“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 for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“All language is but a poor translation.”
― Franz Kafka

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."

[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]”
― Franz Kafka

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
― Franz Kafka

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”
― Franz Kafka

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
― Franz Kafka

“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.”
― Kafka, Franz

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
― Kafka Franz, Diaries, 1910-1923

“April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“They call you heartless: but you have a heart, and I love you for being ashamed to show it. You are ashamed of your flood, while others are ashamed of their ebb.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra