Quote

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

— Franz Kafka

Sentiment: POSITIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

— Theodor Adorno

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

— Alfred Adler

The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable.

— Theodore Parker

To him who, though by no means near the end, is yet advancing, He is the way; to him who has put off all that is dead He is the life.

— Origen

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

— Samuel Butler

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

— Benjamin Franklin

Love and despair go hand in hand.

— Barry Hannah

✗Opposing Perspectives

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'

— Viktor E. Frankl

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

— Vaclav Havel