Mai > Mai's Quotes

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“Paths are made by walking”
― Franz Kafka

“Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”
― franz kafka

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
― Franz Kafka

“Books are a narcotic.”
― Franz Kafka

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

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

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
― Franz Kafka

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
― 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

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
― Franz Kafka

“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

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“سأظل أناضل لاسترجاع الوطن لانه حقي وماضيّ ومستقبلي الوحيد… لأن لي فيه شجرة وغيمة وظل وشمس تتوقد وغيوم تمطر الخصب… وجذور تستعصي على القلع.”
― غسان كنفاني, رسائل غسان كنفاني إلى غادة السمان

“الفراق لا بدّ منه. فلنتلاق بانتظار أن يأتي”
― غسان كنفاني, رسائل غسان كنفاني إلى غادة السمان

“He was shy, timid, gentle, and kind, but he wrote gruesome and painful books. He saw the world as full of invisible demons, who tear apart and destroy defenseless people. He was too clear-sighted and too wise to be able to live; he was too weak to fight, he had that weakness of noble, beautiful people who are not able to do battle against the fear of misunderstandings, unkindness, or intellectual lies. Such persons know beforehand that they are powerless and go down in defeat in such a way that they shame the victor. He knew people as only people of great sensitivity are able to know them, as somebody who is alone and sees people almost prophetically, from one flash of a face. He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world.”
― Milena Jesenska

“عاجز عن الحياة مع الناس، وعن الحديث معهم، منغمس في ذاتي ولا أفكر إلا بنفسي، متبلد وعاجز عن التفكير وليس عندي ما أقوله لأحد .”
― Franz Kafka

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka