Tag: Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Quotes

Posted on December 29, 2011January 3, 2012 by

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

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

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

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

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

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

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Evil is whatever distracts.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Funny Quotes About Parents

Posted on August 13, 2011 by

“Parents are not interested in justice, they’re interested in peace and quiet.” – Bill Cosby

“There are two things that a child will share willingly – communicable diseases and its mother’s age.” – Benjamin Spock

“I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.” – Woody Allen

“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.” – Bill Cosby

“Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.” – Peter Ustinov

“Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, and hold our breath, and hope we’ve set aside enough money to pay for our kids’ therapy.” – Michelle Pfeiffer

“Think of stretch marks as pregnancy service stripes.” – Joyce Armor

“Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.” – Yogi Berra

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.” – Jim Morrison

“I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” – Rodney Dangerfield

“If your parents never had children, chances are you won’t, either.” – Dick Cavett

“That’s sort of a cliché about parents. We all believe that our children are the most beautiful children in the world. But the thing is, what no one really talks about is the fact that we all really believe it.” – Heather Armstrong

“My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.” – Peter De Vries

“Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better is asking for it.” – Erma Bombeck

“My husband and I have decided to start a family while my parents are still young enough to look after them.” – Rita Rudner

“Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.” – Kurt Vonnegut

“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” – Leo Buscaglia

“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.” – John Locke

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” – Mark Twain

“Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.” – Ogden Nash

“My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.” – Kobe Bryant

“I believe that we parents must encourage our children to become educated, so they can get into a good college that we cannot afford.” – Dave Barry

“Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.” – Franz Kafka

“The best part about being friends with your parents is that no matter what you do, they have to keep loving you.” – Natalie Portman

Quotes about Boring Life

Posted on October 16, 2010November 3, 2010 by

– “A finished person is a boring person.” – Anna Quindlen

– “A lot of people stop short. They don’t actually die but they say, ‘Right I’m old, and I’m going to retire,’ and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.” – Mary Wesley

– “A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.” – Franz Kafka

– “Age shouldn’t affect you. It’s just like the size of your shoes – they don’t determine how you live your life! You’re either marvellous or you’re boring, regardless of your age.” – Steven Morrissey

– “All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” – Chuck Palahniuk

– “All I really want to be is boring. When people talk about me, I’d like them to say, Carol’s basically a short Bill Bradley. Or, Carol’s kind of like Al Gore in a skirt.” – Carol Moseley Braun

– “American audiences are just the same as any other audiences. Except a bit more boring.” – Sid Vicious

– “An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring… I ought to know.” – Bette Davis

– “An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.” – Charles de Montesquieu

– “An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.” – Roald Dahl

– “And some poets are far better read off the page because they’re very bad speakers. I’m thinking of one in particular whom I won’t name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.” – Norman MacCaig

– “And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.” – Richard Attenborough

– “Any professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you’ve got to arrive at is a kind of typical gestural crap, right? You might agree, though you wouldn’t call it gestural crap.” – Morton Feldman

– “Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.” – Hilaire Belloc

– “Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down.” – Dave Barry

– “Basically, my life is so boring, it’s embarrassing.” – Hugh Grant

– “Beauty is only skin deep. If you go after someone just because she’s beautiful but don’t have anything to talk about, it’s going to get boring fast. You want to look beyond the surface and see if you can have fun or if you have anything in common with this person.” – Amanda Peet

– “Beauty without expression is boring.” – Waldo Emerson

– “Boring people are a reflection of boring people.” – Douglas Horton

– “Brittany Murphy… who knows if she’s going to be around. Kirsten Dunst, I think she’s really boring. Reese Witherspoon? She can open a movie.” – Jackie Collins

Aging Quotes

Posted on October 4, 2010 by

# Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone. – Jim Fiebig

# Age has extremely little to do with anything that matters. The difference between one age and other is, as a rule, enormously exaggerated. – Rose McCaulay (Dangerous Ages)

# Age is no barrier. It’s a limitation you put on your mind. – Jackie Joyner-Kersee

# Age is of no importance unless you are a cheese. – Billie Burke

# Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. – Florida Scott-Maxwell

# The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. – Doug Larson

# Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. – Franz Kafka

# Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at twenty or eight. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young, but becomes constantly more valuable regardless of physical capacity. – Harvey Ullman

# At age 20, we worry about what others think of us.
At 40, we don’t care what they think of us.
At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all. – Jock Falkson

# The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts and we grow happier as we grow older. – William Lyon Phelps

# Children are a great comfort in your old age–and they help you reach it faster, too. – Lionel Kauffman

# The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning you’re not old. – Rosalyn S. Yalow

# Denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood. – Logan Pearsall Smith

# A friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes asked him why he had take up the study of Greek at the age of ninety-four. Holmes replied, “Well, my good sir, it’s now or never.” – Quoted in He Still Moves Stones by Lucado

Soltitude Quotes

Posted on September 15, 2010 by

– “All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.” – Han Suyin

– “Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.” – Thomas Browne

– “Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.” – Alice Koller

– “Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life’s greatest tests alone.” – Agnes Macphail

– “Each of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. … When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality.” – John O’Donohue

– “I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It’s the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.” – Peter Hoeg

– “I learned…that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.” – Brenda Ueland

– “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” – Albert Einstein

– “I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” – Henry David Thoreau

– “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.” – Pearl S. Buck

– “Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.” – Jeanne Marie Laskas

– “It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking . . . in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.” – Franz Kafka

– “It is well to be alone. It fertilizes the creative impulse.” – Max Nordau

– “Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone, and the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Johannes Tillich

– “Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.” – Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

– “Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.” – Indra Devi