Aditya Shukla > Aditya's Quotes

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

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

“To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace.”
― Confucius, The Analects

“Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.”
― Confucius, The Analects

“When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfill a whole life. Not mine, at any rate.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 1

“I, for my part, never looked forward to anything except the moment the office door closed behind me and I was alone and able to write.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, A Man In Love

“Strong themes and styles have to be broken down before literature can come into being. It is this breaking down that is called “writing.” Writing is more about destroying than creating.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 1

“that is what you do when you breathe, you trespass, again and again you trespass on the world.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, My Struggle: Book 1

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

“There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.”
― Franz Kafka

“You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make”
― -Kafka

“If you read any poetry or stories coming out these days, you know what I mean when I say that you can smell the stench of liquor coming from the words they write. And underneath their sentences lies a pile of chicken and goat bones, and the skeletons of the innocent ones. If you poke the head of the broom into contemporary literature, you'll find a hollow wall stuffed full of money — impure, dirty money.”
― Uday Prakash

“What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar - and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges?

Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules.

And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?”
― Epictetus, The Discourses