From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka

The First Notebook
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

Fourth Notebook
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka

Seventh Notebook
An Inviolable Dream. She was running along the highroad, I did not see her, I only noticed how she swung along as she ran, how her veil flew, how her feet lifted; I was sitting at the edge of the field, gazing into the water of the little stream. She ran through the villages; children standing in the doorways watched her coming and watched her going.

Third Notebook
They were given the choice of becoming kings of the kings’ messengers. As is the way with children, they all wanted to be messengers. That is why there are only messengers, racing through the world and, since there are no kings, calling out to each other the messages that have now become meaningless. They would gladly put an end to their miserable life, but they do not dare to do so because of their oath of loyalty.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Adam’s first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

from the Blue Octavo Notebooks

PROMETHEUS

There are four legends about Prometheus. According to the first, because he had betrayed the gods to men he was chained to a rock in the Caucasus and the gods sent eagles that devoured his perpetually renewed liver.

According to the second, Prometheus in his agony, as the beaks hacked into him, pressed deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third, in the course of thousands of years his treachery was forgotten, the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of what had become meaningless. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

What remained was the inexplicable range of mountains. Legend tries to explain the inexplicable. Since it arises out of a foundation of truth, it must end in the realm of the inexplicable.

- Frank Kafka, Third Notebook

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka: Sixth Notebook

When the little mouse, which was loved as none other in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all the mice in the district, in their holes, were overcome by trembling and shaking; with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one, while their tails scraped the ground busily and senselessly. Then they came out, hesitantly, pushing one another, all drawn towards the scene of death. There it lay, the dear little mouse, its neck caught in the deadly iron, the little pink legs drawn up, and now stiff the feeble body that would so well have deserved a scrap of bacon. The parents stood beside it and eyed their child’s remains.

THE TORMENTING DEMON
The tormenting demon dwells in the forest. In a long-abandoned cabin dating back to old charcoal-burning times. Going in, one notices only an inexpungible smell of things moldering, and nothing else. Smaller than the smallest mouse, invisible even to an eye that comes very close, the tormenting demon cowers in a corner. Nothing, nothing at all can be noticed; quietly the forest murmurs are heard through the empty window. How lonely it is here, and how well it suits you. Here in the corner you will sleep. Why not in the forest, where the air moves freely? Because now you happen to be here, safe in a cabin, in spite of the fact that the door dropped off its hinges long ago and has been carried away. But still, you grope in the air as through you were trying to pull the door to, then you lie down.

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka

REFLECTIONS ON SIN, SUFFERING, HOPE, AND THE TRUE WAY
4. Many shades of the departed are occupied solely in licking at the waves of the river of death because it flows from our direction and still has the salty taste of our seas. Then the river rears back in disgust, the current flows the opposite way and brings the dead drifting back into life. But they are happy, sing songs of thanksgiving, and stroke the indignant waters.
16. A cage went in search of a bird.
20. Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrifical pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.
32. The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.
39a. One cannot pay Evil in installments—and one always keeps on trying to.
51. The mediation by the serpent was necessary: Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.
68. What is gayer than believing in a household god?

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka (Third Notebook)

THE SILENCE OF THE SIRENS
Evidence that even inadequate, indeed childish means may serve to save one.
In order to be safe from the Sirens, Odysseus stopped his ears with wax and had himself chained to the mast. All travelers, from the very beginning, could of course have done something of the kind, but it was common knowledge throughout the world that this was simply of no avail. The Sirens’ song penetrated through everything, and the passion of those who heard its magic would have snapped more than chains and a mast. But Odysseus did not think of that, even though he may have heard tell of it. He relied solely on the handful of wax and the network chains, and in innocent delight over his little stratagem he voyaged on towards the Sirens.
Now the Sirens have a weapon even more terrible than their song, namely, their silence. True, such a thing has not happened, yet perhaps it is thinkable that someone might have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Nothing earthly can withstand the sense of having overcome them with one’s own resources, and the overwhelming arrogance resulting from it.
And in fact, when Odysseus came, the mighty singers did not sing, either because they believed the only way of tackling this opponent was with silence, or because the sight of the utter bliss on Odysseus’s face, as he thought of nothing but wax and chains, caused them quite to forget their singing.
But Odysseus—let us put it like this—did not hear their silence, he thought they were singing and that only he was safe from hearing it. Fleetingly he saw first the poise of their necks, their deep breathing, their eyes brimming with tears, their half-open mouths, but he believed this went with the arias that were resounding, unheard, around him. Soon, however, everything slid away from his gaze, which was fixed on the far distance, the Sirens simply vanished in the face of his resolutions, and in the very moment when he was nearest to them he had already forgotten them.
But they—more beautiful than ever—stretched and turned, letting their dread hair float free upon the wind and tightening their claws upon the rocks. They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus.
If the Sirens had possessed consciousness, they would have been annihilated at that time. As it was, they remained; only Odysseus escaped them.
For the rest, tradition has a note to add to this. Odysseus, it is said, was a man of so many wiles, was such a cunning fox, that even the goddess of destiny could not penetrate into his inmost being. Perhaps, although this is beyond comprehension by the mind of man, he really noticed that the Sirens were silent, and confronted them and the gods with the pretended trick described above only, so to speak, as with a sort of shield.