Franz Kafka

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well. ”

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. ”

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. ”

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid. ”

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer. ”

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

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world. ”

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

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation. ”

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. ”