The Messiah will come as soon as individualism becomes possible.
The graves will then open by themselves.
…. Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms, 1917, age 34

The words of the wise are nearly always parables, but of no use in daily life–which is the only life we have. Parables speak of some fabulous abstract yonder, something the so-called prophets themselves cannot designate more precisely. Parables merely say that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible. But we know that already. Our everyday cares are a totally different matter.
…. Kafka, “On Parables,” 1917

The truth is concrete.
…. Bertolt Brecht carved this saying into a beam in his study during his exile in Denmark in 1933, age 36. He had fled Germany earlier that year, directly following the Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power.

Thereafter the world became for me
Infinitely more beautiful and deeper,
Life more worthwhile and intense,
And death more earnest.

…. Gottfried Keller, 1848

Keller, a Swiss writer, wrote this in his diary the evening after hearing a lecture at the University of Heidelberg by Ludwig Feuerbach. It was the year 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe and Germany, and Keller was 29 and Feuerbach, 45. Feuerbach was a philosopher and anthropologist, and had shifted philosophy’s focus from abstractions to concrete human existence. Arguing that God represents a projection of human consciousness and attributes, he stated that “man had created God in his own image,” and urged that friends of God should also become friends of man [and woman], in his Lectures on the Essence of Religion. His work significantly influenced not only Keller but also Karl Marx, who subsequently shifted his idealism to a focus on humans.

He was a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.
 …. Homer’s Iliad. Profile of a heroic man [or woman], still valid after 2500 years (Book 9, line 480).

My Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institution is a creation of the labor movement. It should be filled with the radiant spirit of progress. But what happens? The Institution becomes a dark nest of bureaucrats—of rules and regulations, red tape, and the “slime” of a bureaucracy.  
…. Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (Kafka age 36 to his 17 year old poet friend, on one of their walks in Prague to a café, 1920).

Kill God, then build another Church: this is the constant and contradictory purpose of so many rebellions.
…. Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1950 (Example: Robespierre’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, which was followed by him erecting a Cult of the Supreme Being—then being beheaded by his fellow revolutionaries using the Guillotine, 1794)

It was a lovely night, one of those nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young. The sky was so bright and starry that when you looked at it the first question that came into your mind was whether it was really possible that all sorts of bad-tempered and unstable people could live under such a glorious sky. It is a question, dear reader, that would occur only to a young man, but may the good Lord put it into your head as well, and as often as possible!
…. Fyodor Dostoevsky, “White Nights in Saint Petersburg” (A short story by a young author in the summer of 1848, age 27)

The purpose of the poet is to catalyze perception,
To de-familiarize us from the all-to-familiar;
The poet’s task is to open our eyes once again—
To make the stone stony.

 …. Viktor Shklovsky, Russian literary critic (Theory of Prose, 1917)