Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

"Hey, there’s something falling down in there," said the chief clerk. Gregor tried to suppose to himself that what had happened to him might some day also happen to the chief clerk. There was no denying that anything was possible.

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

And now, Land Surveyor, consider the possibility that through some circumstances or other, despite all the obstacles already described to you, which are in general quite sufficient, an applicant does nevertheless succeed in surprising in the middle of the night a secretary with a degree of competence with regard to the case in question. I daresay you have not considered such a possibility.

To be precise, one is desperate. To be more precise, one is very happy.

...and so at last into the human harmony.

Human nature, ever changing and as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint. If it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, rending everything asunder, the wall, its bonds, its very self.

Considering also his importance in the history of the world, he deserves at least a friendly reception.

Josephine reaches for the highest garland, not because it is momentarily hanging a little lower, but because it is the highest.

But all remained unchanged.

It is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us merely for forgetting for the thousandth time?

No obligation will arise as far as you are concerned.

But they, lovelier than ever, craned and twisted, let their gruesome hair float free in the air, stretched their claws wide on the rocks, they wanted to allure no more, all they wanted was to catch for as long as possible the reflected radiance from the great eyes of Odysseus.

A lake doesn't flow into anything, you know.