1. The
True Way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
3. 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.
6. The decisive moment in human development is a continous one. For this
reason the
revolutionary movements which declare everything before them
null and
void are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.
12. Like a road in autumn: Hardly is it swept clean before it is covered
again with dead leaves.
13. A cage went in search of a bird.
15. If it had been possible to build the
Tower of Babel without asecnding
it, the work would have been permitted.
24. What is laid upon us is to accomplish the
negative; the positive is
already given.
25. Once we have granted accomodation to the
Evil One he no longer demands
that we should believe him.
29. The crows mantain that a single crow could destroy the
heavens.
Doubtless that is so, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for the
heavens signify simply: the impossibility of crows.
36. One cannot pay the Evil One in installments - and yet one perpetually
tries to do it.
54. There are questions which we could never get over if we were not
delivered from them by the operation of nature.
66.
Theorectically there exists a perfect possibility of happiness: to
believe in the indestructible
element in oneself and not strive after it.
73. Intercourse with
human beings seduces one to self
contemplation.
83. A faith like a
guillotine, as heavy, as light.
84. Death confronts us not unlike the
historical battle scene that hangs on
the wall of the classroom. It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate
the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world.
103. "But then he returned to his work as if nothing had happened." That is
a saying which sounds familiar to us from an
indefinite number of old
tales, though in fact it perhaps occurs in none.
--
Franz Kafka