Franz Kafka Quotes on Evil

7 quotes

  1. When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.

  2. The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil. The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash.

  3. The mediation by the serpent was necessary: Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

  4. There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution. One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.

  5. Evil is a radiation of the human consciousness in certain transitional positions. It is not actually the sensual world that is a mere appearance; what is so is the evil of it, which, admittedly, is what constitutes the sensual world in our eyes.

  6. There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

  7. Evil is whatever distracts.

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