Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

80
Truth in indivisible, so it can not identify itself; one who desires to identify it must be a lie.

55
Everything is unfaithful deceit and deception: seeking the minimum of illusive misrepresentation; remaining within the customary; seeking the maximum. In the first case (a fall) one is unfaithful to the good while one desires to make its acquisition or purchase easier, and the evil in that one plants it in the all too inconvenient or unfavorable conditions of struggle. In the second case (a fall) one is unfaithful to the good in that one did not strive after it even once in terrestrial ways. In the third case (a fall) one is unfaithful to the good in that one distances himself as far as possible from it, and the evil, in that one hoped to make itthrough his ascent to the highest heightspowerless. The preference would thenhereafterbe the second case, because one is always unfaithful to the good, but not in this caseat the very least according to its appearancethe evil.

75
Test yourself on humanity. The doubters make it doubt, the believers make it believe.

1
The true pathway goes over a cable thatrather than spanning high in the airis hardly over the ground. It appears more decidedly to make one trip, rather than to be walked on.

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Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

4
Many shadows of the departedthose who have cut themselves off occupy themselves only in baring the flood of the river of the dead, because it comes from us and still has the salty taste of our seas. Out of disgust the flood resists itself, takes on a backwards flow, and sweeps the dead back into life. But they are happy, sing songs of thanksgiving and rejoice, and stroke their outrage.

16
A cage went in search of a bird.

21
So firm, like the hand holds a stone. She (the hand) holds him (the stone) firmly, however, only in order to throw him ever further away. But the way leads also into that distance.

41
The disproportion of the world appearsin the way of comfortto be only a numerical matter.

7
One of evil's most effective mediums of seduction is the challenge to struggle. He (this struggle) is as the struggle with women, which ends in bed.

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Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

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Difference of views that one can havefor instanceof an apple: the view of the small boy, who must stretch his neck in order just barely to see the apple on the tabletop, and the view of the head of the house, who takes the apple and freely serves the table's enjoyments.

44
Deserving of laughter, you have harnessed yourself for this world.

22
You are the task and exercise (or the giving up). No pupil far and wide.

24
Happiness comprehends that the ground on which you stand can be no larger than the two feet that cover it.

40
Only our concept of time allows us to name the final judgment so; actually it is a martial law.

63
Our art is one of the truth dazzling-being: the light from the grotesque face as it retreats backward is true, nothing else.

25
How can one delight in the world outside of when one flees to her?
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Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

52
In the struggle between you and the world, second the world.

29
The ulterior motives with which you accommodate evil in yourself are not yours but those of evil. The animal frees the master of the whip and whips itself in order to become its master, and knows not that this is only a fantasy produced through a new knot in the master's whip-strap.

45
For each additional horse you yoke, it goes that much more rapidly not, namely, tearing the blocks out of the foundation (which is impossible), rather the rending of the strap, and with it the empty, cheerful journey.

87
A belief like a guillotine: so grave, so heavy; so simple, so light.

50
Man can-not live without a lasting faith in something indestructible in himself, wherein the indestructible as well as the faith can remainto him constantly and unceasingly concealed. One of the possible expressions of this [remaining-concealed/concealed-remaining] is the belief in a personal God.

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Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

76
This feeling: "here I do not and shall not lie at anchor" and at the same time feeling the rough supportive torrent around oneself. A drastic alteration of course. Lying impatiently in wait, full of angst, hopeful, the answer creeps around the question, seeking despairingly in their unapproachable face, following it to the most senseless point, which means away from the answer in ways thatas much as they possibly couldstrive for the way.

67
He runs after facts like a beginner in skating who, furthermore, practices somewhere where it is forbidden.

78
The spirit (the mind) becomes free only when it stops being a foothold.

58
One lies as little as possible only when one lies as little as possible, not when one has as few opportunities as possible to do so.

109
"That we are lacking in belief or faith, one can not say. Alone, the simple fact of our livesin its belief valueis nothing at all to bail one out." "You suggest here would be a value of belief? One can, however, not notlive."

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Franz Kafka, Zurau Aphorisms on Truth and Lie

Translated by Asher

"Even in this 'can however not' hides the insane strength of belief; in this denial and negation, it receives form." It is not necessary that you go out of the house. Remain by your table and listen. Don't even listen, only wait. Don't even wait, be fully still and alone. Volunteering, the world becomes exposed, unmasked, returned to a larval state. She can do nothing else; ecstatic she would writhe before you.

93
For the last time psychology!

108
"Then, however, he returned to his work as if nothing had occurred." This is a remark that is common to us from an unclear abundance of old stories, however it happens in possibly none of them.

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