The Zürau Aphorisms

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.

The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven means precisely: the impossibility of crows.

You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world — that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature — but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.

In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world. (Im Kampf zwischen Dir und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt)

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world’s coat.

Why then do you fear love in particular more than earthly existence in general?” Kafka replied as if from an astral distance: “You write: ‘Why be more afraid of love than of other things in life?’ And just before that: ‘I experienced the intermittently divine for the first time, and more frequently than elsewhere, in love.’ If you conjoin these two sentences, it’s as if you had said: ‘Why not fear every bush in the same way that you fear the burning bush?

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.

We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us.

A cage went in search of a bird.

For Kafka, paradise wasn’t a place where people lived in the past and of which a memory has survived, but rather a perennial, hidden presence. In every moment, an immense, encompassing obstacle prevents us from seeing it. That obstacle is nothing other than the expulsion from paradise—a process Kafka called “eternal in its principal aspect.

48 Belief in progress doesn’t mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.

There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: impatience and indolence.

The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.

He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.

Es perfectamente imaginable que el esplendor de la vida está dispuesto, siempre en toda plenitud, alrededor de cada uno, pero cubierto de un velo, en las profundidades, invisible muy lejos. Sin embargo está ahí, no hostil, no a disgusto, no sordo, viene si uno lo llama con la palabra correcta, por su nombre correcto, Es la esencia de la magia, que no crea, sino llama.

Evil is an emanation of human consciousness at certain transitional points. It is not really the physical world that is illusion, but the Evil of it, which to our eyes constitutes, admittedly, the physical world.

We don’t all share one body, but we do share growth, and that leads us through all pain, whether in this form or that.

Language can be used only very obliquely of things outside the physical world, not even metaphorically, since all it knows to do—according to the nature of the physical world—is to treat of ownership and its relations.

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.

The dogs are still playing in the yard, but the quarry will not escape them, never mind how fast it is running through the forest already.

Only here is suffering really suffering. Not in the way that those who suffer here are to be ennobled in some other world for their suffering, but that what passes for suffering in this world is, in another world, without any change and merely without its contrariety, bliss.