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The Trial QUOTES

The Trial QUOTES

1 " But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

2 " It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

3 " It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his own point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two were sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast, perhaps? "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

4 " Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

5 " Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions? "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

6 " I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

7 " Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

8 " It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

9 " They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

10 " it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

11 " Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

12 " No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

13 " The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

14 " Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

15 " I like to make use of what I know "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

16 " You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

17 " It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

18 " Like a Dog! "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

19 " Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial

20 " One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the dispositions of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery – since everything interlocked – and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless. "

― Franz Kafka , The Trial