Top 265 Quotes & Sayings by Karl Kraus - Page 4

Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.

Anesthesia: wounds without pain. Neurasthenia: pain without wounds.

Since the day man first tried to conquer space, the earth has been mobilizing.

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.

The new psychiatrists say that everything and anything can be traced back to sexual causes. Their method, for example, could be explained as the eroticism of father confessors.

If you wish to form a clear judgment on your friends, consult your dreams.

Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.

Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks.

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

Not greeting people isn't enough. One also doesn't greet people one doesn't know.

The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.

In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd.

A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.

If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.

Let my style capture all the sounds of my time. This should make it an annoyance to my contemporaries. But later generations should hold it to their ears like a seashell in which there is the music of an ocean of mud.

On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct.

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.

That an author takes a bow is not humility but presumption. What does the paleface want on the stage afterwards? But before the performance he had even less business there--and paying him royalties is equivalent to cheating the actors.

A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.

How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.

The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.

It is a mystery to me how a theologian can be praised for having brought himself to disbelieve dogmas. I've always thought that those who have brought themselves to believe in dogmas merit the true recognition owing a heroic deed.

In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year.

Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.

The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it.

One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.

Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.

They judge lest they be judged.

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.

Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.

I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails.

How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.

Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.

Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received.

I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment toacquire gradually an encyclopedic lack of education.

Medicine: "Your money and your life!

To have no ideas and being able to express them is the essence of journalism.

What is a historian? Someone who doesn't write well enough to work on a daily.

The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.

My readers think that I write for the day because my writings are based on the day. So I shall have to wait until my writings are obsolete. Then they may acquire timeliness.

Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.

Family life is an encroachment on private life.

To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.

The real truths are those that can be invented.

A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.

Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts.

Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life.

Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer.

It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.

Why didn't Eternity have this deformed age aborted ? Its birthmark is the stamp of a newspaper, its medium is printer's ink, and in its veins flows ink.