Quotations by Franz Kafka

FRANZ KAFKA (1883 –1924), ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT AUSTRIAN (CZECH) JEWISH NOVELISTS AND SHORT STORY WRITERS OF THE 20^TH-CENTURY MODERN WORLD LITERATURE.

 

 

 “Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“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.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“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

 

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice‎

 

“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

 

“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910 1923

 

“Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

~ Franz Kafka, Kafka's Selected Stories

 

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“The man in ecstasy and the man drowning—both throw up their arms.”

~ Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

 

“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don't, then everything is over with here, once and for all.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...”

~ Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China

 

“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

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Quotations by Walter Scott

WALTER SCOTT, IN FULL SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1ST BARONET (1771 –1832) WAS A LEADING SCOTTISH NOVELIST, POET, AND CRITIC.

 

“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.”

~ Walter Scott, Redgauntlet

 

“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom," he said to himself, "but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“I should be rather like the wild hawk, who, barred the free exercise of his soar through heaven, will dash himself to pieces against the bars of his cage.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity….and to the timid and hesitating everything is impossible, because it seems so.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.”

~ Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805

 

“Upon subjects which interested him, and when quite at ease, he possessed that flow of natural, and somewhat florid eloquence, which has been supposed as powerful as figure, fashion, fame, or fortune, in winning the female heart. There”

~ Walter Scott, Waverley

 

“I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.”

~ Walter Scott, Tales of My Landlord

 

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”

~ Walter Scott, Marmion

 

“We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Your lordship’s servant has a sensible, natural, pretty idea of military matters; somewhat irregular, though, and smells a little too much of selling the bear’s skin before he has hunted him.”

~ Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose

 

“Blessed be his name, who hath appointed the quiet night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh the wearied limbs and to compose the troubled spirit.”

~ Walter Scott, The Talisman

 

“The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,

And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;

The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew

And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”

 

~ Walter Scott, The Lady Of The Lake: Canto Iv. - The Prophecy

 

“I'll listen, till my fancy hears

The clang of swords' the crash of spears!

These grates, these walls, shall vanish then

For the fair field of fighting men,

And my free spirit burst away,

As if it soared from battle fray.”

~ Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake

 

“A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

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Quotations by Henry James

HENRY JAMES, (1843 –1916), WAS A PROMINENT AMERICAN NOVELIST AND CRITIC.

 

 

 “We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

~ Henry James, The Middle Years

 

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

~ Henry James, Letter to H. G. Wells, [10 July 1915]

 

“I'm yours for ever – for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.”

~ Henry James, Letter to Grace Norton [July 28,1883]

 

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

~ Henry James, Roderick Hudson

 

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

~ Henry James, The Ambassadors

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.”

~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.”

~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”

~ Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James

 

“I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”
 

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

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Quotations by George Eliot

GEORGE ELIOT, PSEUDONYM OF MARY ANN, OR MARIAN, CROSS, NÉE EVANS, (1819- 1880) WAS AN ENGLISH NOVELIST, WHO STANDS AMONGST THE FIRST-RANKED WRITERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY.

 

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”

~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

 

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”

~ George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

 

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

 “And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.”

~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

 

“No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.”

~ George Eliot, Silas Marner

 

“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”

~ George Eliot, Mr Gilfil's Love Story

 

“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

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