Franz Kafka: 10 quotes on his birthday

Considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, Franz Kafka, author of the classic novel "The Metamorphosis" (1912), was born on July 3, 1883 to Jewish parents of the German-speaking middle class in Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). Franz was the oldest of six siblings who were raised largely by governesses and servants because both his parents worked long hours for his father’s retail business. Always seeking to further his social mobility, Kafka’s father was a domineering and hot-tempered man. Kafka's tense relationship with him is documented in “The Judgment” (1912) and "Letter to Father" (1919). At university Kafka studied law, but, a year after graduating, Kafka took a job with flexible hours at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute that allowed him to focus on his writing, rather than pursuing a career in law, as his father had hoped. Kafka died in 1924, after contracting tuberculosis. Kafka’s other works include “A Hunger Artist” (1924), “In the Penal Colony” (1919), "The Trial" (1914), and "The Castle" (1922).

1. Beauty

Public Domain

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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