The Trial Quotes

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial
606 likes Like
“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the
pointlessness would have made him unable.”
tags: logic, pointless, suicide 219 likes Like
“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point
that must be reached.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is
determined to live.”
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“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.”
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“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done
anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”
tags: opening-lines 76 likes Like
“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter
do not wholly exclude each other.”
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“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”
tags: death, guilty, human, human-condition, life, mistakes, priest, trial 55 likes Like
“I like to make use of what I know”
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“It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as
necessary”
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“Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head
to one point, a ques-tion he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer,
since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low
towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the
man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you
are insati-able." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it
happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admit-
tance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his
failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted
here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
33 likes Like
“The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us
suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as
though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human
habitation”
“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.”
tags: franz-kafka, injustice, the-trial 28 likes Like
“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable,
and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”
tags: opinions 27 likes Like
“Like a Dog!”
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“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.”
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“Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”
tags: inspirational 20 likes Like
“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass
so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”
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“You're not cross with me, though?" he said. She pulled her hand away and
answered, "No, no, I'm never cross with anyone.”
tags: women 13 likes Like
“Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the
judgement.”
tags: judgement 13 likes Like
“But I cannot find my way in this darkness," said K. "Turn left to the wall," said the
priest, "then follow the wall without leaving it and you'll come to a door." The priest
had already taken a step or two away from him, but K. cried out in a loud voice,
"please wait a moment." "I am waiting," said the priest. "Don't you want anything
more form me?" asked K. "No," said the priest. "You were so friendly to me for a
time," said K., "and explained so much to me, and now you let me go as if you cared
nothing about me." "But you have to leave now," said the priest. "Well, yes," said K.,
"you must see that I can't help it." "You must first see who I am," said the priest.
"You are the prison chaplain," said K., groping his way nearer to the priest again; his
immediate return to the Bank was not so necessary as he had made out, he could
quite stay longer. "That means I belong to the Court," said the priest. "So why should
I want anything from you? The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when
you came and it dismisses you when you go.”
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“Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a
man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says
that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will
be allowed, then, to enter later. 'It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, 'but not at
this moment.' Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the
doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance.
When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: 'If you are so strongly tempted,
try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the
lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more
powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot
bear to look at.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not
expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all
times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his
huge pointed nose and long, thin, Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait
until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit
down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes
many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity.
The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home
and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men
put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be
allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his
journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the
doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: 'I
take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.' During
all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets
about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between
himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows
old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch
he has learned to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur collar, he begs the very
fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his
eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around
him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now
perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law. Now his life
is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole
time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet
put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his
stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference
in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. 'What do
you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'Everyone strives
to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these
years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that
the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in
his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door
was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
12 likes Like
“The books were old
and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken through in its
middle, and it was held together with a few threads. "Everything is so
dirty here," said K., shaking his head, and before he could pick the
books up the woman wiped some of the dust off with her apron. K. took
hold of the book that lay on top and threw it open, an indecent picture
appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on a sofa, the base intent of
whoever drew it was easy to see but he had been so grossly lacking in
skill that all that anyone could really make out were the man and the
woman who dominated the picture with their bodies, sitting in overly
upright postures that created a false perspective and made it difficult
for them to approach each other. K. didn't thumb through that book any
more, but just threw open the next one at its title page, it was a novel
with the title, What Grete Suffered from her Husband, Hans. "So this is
the sort of law book they study here," said K., "this is the sort of
person sitting in judgment over me.”
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“You do not need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as
necessary.”
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“If he stayed at home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand
times superior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just with a
kick.”
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“Next time I come here," he said to himself, "I must either bring sweets with me to
make them like me or a stick to hit them with.”
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“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?”
tags: breakfast, police, suicide 9 likes Like
“Anyway, it’s best not to think about them, as if you do it makes the discussions with
the other lawyers, all their advice and all that they do manage to achieve, seem so
unpleasant and useless, I had that experience myself, just wanted to throw
everything away and lay at home in bed and hear nothing more about it. But that, of
course, would be the stupidest thing you could do, and you wouldn’t be left in peace
in bed for very long either.”
“Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The
supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from
the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening
as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing
the length of his fingers.”
tags: listening, rude, social 7 likes Like
“Don't concern yourself about anybody. Just do what you think is right.”
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“There is a story, for instance, that has very much the ring of truth about it. It goes
like this: One of the older officials, a good and peaceful man, was dealing with a
difficult matter for the court which had become very confused, especially thanks to
the contributions from the lawyers. He had been studying it for a day and a night
without a break — as these officials are indeed hard working, no-one works as hard
as they do. When it was nearly morning, and he had been working for twenty-four
hours with probably very little result, he went to the front entrance, waited there in
ambush, and every time a lawyer tried to enter the building he would throw him
down the steps. The lawyers gathered together down in front of the steps and
discussed with each other what they should do; on the one hand they had actually
no right to be allowed into the building so that there was hardly anything that they
could legally do to the official and, as I've already mentioned, they would have to be
careful not to set all the officials against them. On the other hand, any day not spent
in court is a day lost for them and it was a matter of some importance to force their
way inside. In the end, they agreed that they would try to tire the old man out. One
lawyer after another was sent out to run up the steps and let himself be thrown
down again, offering what resistance he could as long as it was passive resistance,
and his colleagues would catch him at the bottom of the steps. That went on for
about an hour until the old gentleman, who was already exhausted from working all
night, was very tired and went back to his office.”
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“Asking questions were the most important thing.”
“Above all, the free man is superior to the man who has to serve another.”
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“Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it.”
tags: opinion 6 likes Like
“Once more the odious courtesies began, the first handed the knife across K. to the
second, who handed it across K. back again to the first. K. now perceived clearly that
he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand above
him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely turned his
head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him. He could not completely
rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the officials of all their tasks; the
responsibility for this last failure of his lay with him who had not left him the
remnant of strength necessary for the deed.”
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“Logic is of course unshakeable, but it cannot hold out against a man who wants to
live.”
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“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done
anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”
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“When one has lived for thirty years in this world and had to fight one's way
through it, as I have had to do, one becomes hardened to surprises and doesn't take
them too seriously.”
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“People under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be
sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.”
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“I had to arrange things as well as I could. That's obviously a very bad place for the
bed, in front of the door. For instance when the judge I'm painting at present comes
he always comes through the door by the bed, and I've even given him a key to this
door so that he can wait for me here in the studio when I'm not home. Although
nowadays he usually comes early in the morning when I'm still asleep. And of
course, it always wakes me up when I hear the door opened beside the bed, however
fast asleep I am. If you could hear the way I curse him as he climbs over my bed in
the morning you'd lose all respect for judges. I suppose I could take the key away
from him but that'd only make things worse. It only takes a tiny effort to break any
of the doors here off their hinges.”
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“As someone said to me--I can't remember now who it was--it is really remarkable
that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in exactly
the same place as the evening before. For when asleep and dreaming you are,
apparently at least, in an essentially different state from that of wakefulness; and
therefore, as that man truly said, it requires enormous presence of mind or rather
quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold as it were of everything in
the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening.
That was why, he said, the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the
day. Once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take
heart of grace for the rest of the day.”
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“I am never serious, and therefore I have to make jokes do duty both for jest and
earnest.”
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“Don't look at him!" he snapped, without noticing how odd it was to speak to free
men in this way”
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“The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other
light.”
tags: moonlight 3 likes Like
“It's characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when
he's innocent but also in ignorance.”
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“Everyone has his cross to bear.”
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“They linked arms with him in a way K. had never walked with anyone before”
tags: sombre 3 likes Like
“Above all, he could not stop half way, that was nonsense not only in business but
always and everywhere.”
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“He accepted it as a fundamental principle for an accused man to be always
forearmed, never to let himself be caught napping, never to let his eyes stray
unthinkingly to the right when his judge was looming up on the left--to the right
when his judge was looming up on the left--and against that very principle he kept
offending again and again.”
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“Such a young trial!”
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“It's often better to be in chains than to be free.”
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“No,' said the priest, 'we must not accept everything is true, we must only accept it is
necessary.'
'A dismal thought,' said K., 'it makes untruth into a universal principle.”
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“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.”
tags: law 2 likes Like
“Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?”
tags: existentialism, nihilism, post-modernism 2 likes Like
“For a man under suspicion movement is better than rest, for the man who is at rest
can always, without knowing it, be on the scales being weighed together with his
sins.”
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“One does not have to believe everything is true, one only has to believe it is
necessary.”
“Whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; that is, he belongs to
the Law and as such is set beyond human judgment.”
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“The only thing I can do now,” he said to himself, and his thought was confirmed by
the equal length of his own steps with the steps of the two others, “the only thing I
can do now is keep my common sense and do what’s needed right till the end. I
always wanted to go at the world and try and do too much, and even to do it for
something that was not too cheap. That was wrong of me. Should I now show them I
learned nothing from facing trial for a year? Should
I go out like someone stupid? Should I let anyone say, after I’m gone, that at the start
of the proceedings I wanted to end them, and that now that they’ve ended I want to
start them again? I don’t want anyone to say that. I’m grateful they sent these
unspeaking, uncomprehending men to go with me on this journey, and that it’s been
left up to me to say what’s necessary”

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

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