9 Franz Kafka Quotes on Identity

Franz Kafka quotes on identity

63. * I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.

67. There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.

72. How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community, sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs, I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair.

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

91. If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!

99. My fear... is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

111. There will be no proof that I ever was a writer

117. What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.

121. You are free and that is why you are lost.