A letter from Kafka to his friend Oskar Pollak, 1903, quoted in Briefe (ed. Max Brod)
“For we are abandoned, like children lost in the wood. When you stand before me, and look at me, what do you know of the pains that are in me, and what do I know of yours? And if I were to prostate myself before you and weep and talk, would you know any more about me than you know about hell when someone tells you it is hot and fearsome? For this reason alone, we human beings should stand before one another with as much respect, as much sympathy, and as much love as if we were standing before the gates of hell.”
“For it is only by summoning up all their strengths and helping one another with loving care that human beings are able to maintain themselves at a tolerable height above the internal abyss toward which they gravitate. They are joined together by ropes, and it is a bitter thing when the ropes around one of them slacken and he sinks a little lower than the others into the void, and it is quite horrible when the ropes around one of them break, and he then falls. That is why we should always hold on to other people.”
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