The Zürau Aphorisms Quotes

“There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven means precisely: the impossibility of crows.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world — that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature — but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“In the struggle between yourself
and the world, second the world.

(Im Kampf zwischen Dir
und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt)”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world’s coat.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Why then do you fear love in particular more than earthly existence in general?” Kafka replied as if from an astral distance: “You write: ‘Why be more afraid of love than of other things in life?’ And just before that: ‘I experienced the intermittently divine for the first time, and more frequently than elsewhere, in love.’ If you conjoin these two sentences, it’s as if you had said: ‘Why not fear every bush in the same way that you fear the burning bush?”
― Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms

“We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

“A cage went in search of a bird.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of laziness we cannot return. Perhaps, however, there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out, because of impatience we cannot return.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“For Kafka, paradise wasn’t a place where people lived in the past and of which a memory has survived, but rather a perennial, hidden presence. In every moment, an immense, encompassing obstacle prevents us from seeing it. That obstacle is nothing other than the expulsion from paradise—a process Kafka called “eternal in its principal aspect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms

“48 Belief in progress doesn’t mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

“There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: impatience and indolence.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Es perfectamente imaginable que el esplendor de la vida está dispuesto, siempre en toda plenitud, alrededor de cada uno, pero cubierto de un velo, en las profundidades, invisible muy lejos. Sin embargo está ahí, no hostil, no a disgusto, no sordo, viene si uno lo llama con la palabra correcta, por su nombre correcto, Es la esencia de la magia, que no crea, sino llama.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“به محکمی دستی که سنگی را نگه داشته است؛ گرچه آن را فقط به این خاطر محکم نگه داشته تا آن را به فاصله دورتری پرتاب کند، اما حتی تا آن فاصله هم مسیری هست.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Evil is an emanation of human consciousness at certain transitional points. It is not really the physical world that is illusion, but the Evil of it, which to our eyes constitutes, admittedly, the physical world.”
― Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

“Wenn man einmal das Böse bei sich aufgenommen hat, verlangt es nicht mehr, daß man ihm glaube.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt, das Positive ist uns schon gegeben.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“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.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“We don’t all share one body, but we do share growth, and that leads us through all pain, whether in this form or that.”
― Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

“Av köpekleri henüz avluda oynuyor, ama avları daha şimdiden ormanda ne kadar hızlı koşarlarsa koşsunlar, ellerinden kurtulamayacaklar.”
― Franz Kafka, Aforizmalar

“Language can be used only very obliquely of things outside the physical world, not even metaphorically, since all it knows to do—according to the nature of the physical world—is to treat of ownership and its relations.”
― Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

“The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.”
― Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

“The dogs are still playing in the yard, but the quarry will not escape them, never mind how fast it is running through the forest already.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Only here is suffering really suffering. Not in the way that those who suffer here are to be ennobled in some other world for their suffering, but that what passes for suffering in this world is, in another world, without any change and merely without its contrariety, bliss.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms

“Ν'αφήνεις το κεφάλι, που γεμάτο αηδία και μίσος είναι, να γέρνει στον κόρφο.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms