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Feminine Passion Is To Masculine As An Epic Is To An Epigram.

-Karl Kraus

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Feminine Passion Is To

Karl Kraus

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Feminine Passion Is To Masculine As An Epic Is To An Epigram.

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Masculine And Feminine

More From Karl Kraus

Cosmetics Is The Science Of A Woman's Cosmos.

How Powerful Social Mores Are! Only A Spider's Web Lies Across The Volcano, Yet It Refrains From Erupting.

Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself. Because Each Of Us Is His Own Neighbor.

Love Thy Neighbor

A School Without Grades Must Have Been Concocted By Someone Who Was Drunk On Non-alcoholic Wine.

One Cleans Someone Else's Threshold Of Consciousness Only If One's Own Home Is Dirty.

Science Is Spectral Analysis. Art Is Light Synthesis.

There Are Women Who Are Not Beautiful But Only Look That Way.

The World Is A Prison In Which Solitary Confinement Is Preferable.

Religion, Morality, And Patriotism Are Feelings That Are Manifested Only When They Are Outraged.

A Journalist Is Stimulated By A Deadline. He Writes Worse When He Has Time

Newspapers Have Roughly The Same Relationship To Life As Fortune-tellers To Metaphysics.

The Closer The Look One Takes At A Word, The Greater Distance From Which It Looks Back.

A Snob Is Unreliable. The Work He Praises Might Just Be Good.

War Is, At First, The Hope That One Will Be Better Off; Next, The Expectation That The Other Fellow Will Be Worse Off; Then, The Satisfaction That He Isn't Any Better Off; And, Finally, The Surprise At Everyone's Being Worse Off.

What Torture, This Life In Society! Often Someone Is Obliging Enough To Offer Me A Light, And In Order To Oblige Him I Have To Fish A Cigarette Out Of My Pocket.

It Is Regarded As Normal To Consecrate Virginity In General And To Lust For Its Destruction In Particular.

I Have To Do This, As Long As It Is At All Possible; For If Those Who Are Obliged To Look After Commas Had Always Made Sure They Were In The Right Place, Then Shanghai Would Not Be Burning.

Imagination Has The Right To Feast In The Shade Of The Tree That It Turns Into A Forest.

He Who Does Without The Praise Of The Crowd Will Not Deny Himself An Opportunity To Be His Own Adherent.

Sexuality Poorly Repressed Unsettles Some Families; Well Repressed, It Unsettles The Whole World.

A Historian Is Often Only A Journalist Facing Backwards.

A Good Writer Does Not Receive Anywhere Near The Number Of Poison-pen Letters That Is Commonly Assumed. Among A Hundred Jackassesthere Are Not Ten Who Will Admit To Being Jackasses, And At Most One Who Will Put It In Writing.

Sentimental Irony Is A Dog That Bays At The Moon While Pissing On Graves.

The Tyranny Of Necessity Grants Its Slaves Three Kinds Of Freedom: Opinion Free From Intellect, Entertainment Free From Art, And Orgies Free From Love.

Language Is The Mother Of Thought, Not Its Handmaiden.

In Case Of Doubt, Decide In Favor Of What Is Correct.

The Press, That Goiter Of The World, Swells Up With The Desire For Conquest And Bursts With The Achievements Which Every Day Brings. A Week Has Room For The Boldest Climax Of The Human Drive For Expansion.

The Most Incomprehensible Talk Comes From People Who Have No Other Use For Language Than To Make Themselves Understood.

I Don't Like To Meddle In My Private Affairs.

They Judge Lest They Be Judged.

Immortality Is The Only Thing Which Doesn't Tolerate Being Postponed.

Who Is Going To Cast Out An Error To Which He Has Given Birth And Replace It With An Adopted Truth?

Blushing, Palpitations, A Bad Conscience--this Is What You Get If You Haven't Sinned.

A Writer Is Someone Who Can Make A Riddle Out Of An Answer.

Keep Your Passions In Check, But Beware Of Giving Your Reason Free Rein.

Today's Literature: Prescriptions Written By Patients.

The Blind Won't Admit That I Have Eyes In My Head, And The Deaf Say That I'm Dumb.

If Someone Calls Me Vain And Mean, I Know That He Trusts Me And Has Something To Confess To Me.

Language Is The Only Chimera Whose Illusory Power Is Endless, The Inexhaustibility Which Keeps Life From Being Impoverished. Let Men Learn To Serve Language.

When A Man Is Treated Like A Beast, He Says, 'after All, I'm Human.' When He Behaves Like A Beast, He Says 'after All, I'm Only Human.

My Respect For The Inconsiderable Is Assuming Gigantic Dimensions.

A White Lie Is Always Pardonable. But He Who Tells The Truth Without Compulsion Merits No Leniency.

Many Talents Preserve Their Precociousness Right Into Old Age.

If By Day Art Is In The Service Of Business, The Evenings Are Devoted To The Businessman's Enjoyment Of It. That Is Asking A Lot Of Art, But Art And The Businessman Make It Work.

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.

The Heroes Of Obtrusiveness, People With Whom No Soldier Would Lie Down In The Trenches, Though He Has To Submit To Being Interviewed By Them, Break Into Recently Abandoned Royal Castles So That They Can Report, "we Got There First!" It Would Be Far Less Shameful To Be Paid For Committing Atrocities Than For Fabricating Them.

There Are Writers Who Can Express In As Little As Twenty Pages What I Occasionally Need As Many As Two For.

One Cannot Dictate An Aphorism To A Typist. It Would Take Too Long.

My Request That My Writing Be Read Twice Has Aroused Great Indignation. Unjustly So. After All, I Do Not Ask That They Be Read Once.

Prussia: Freedom Of Movement With A Muzzle. Austria: An Isolation Cell In Which Screaming Is Allowed.

There Is No More Unfortunate Creature Under The Sun Than A Fetishist Who Yearns For A Woman's Shoe And Has To Settle For The Whole Woman.

I Had A Terrible Vision: I Saw An Encyclopedia Walk Up To A Polymath And Open Him Up.

The Superman Is A Premature Ideal, One That Presupposes Man.

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.

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.

When A Culture Feels That Its End Has Come, It Sends For A Priest.

No Ideas And The Ability To Express Them - That's A Journalist.

Barbershop Conversations Are Irrefutable Proof That Heads Exist For The Sake Of Hair.

My Unconscious Knows More About The Consciousness Of The Psychologist Than His Consciousness Knows About My Unconscious.

What Do People Have Against Convicts? Is Living Together In The Pen Of Freedom, Where Young People Engage In Mutual Psychology, Any More Beautiful?

Christianity Has Enriched The Erotic Meal With The Appetizer Of Curiosity And Spoiled It With The Dessert Of Remorse.

When I Don't Make Any Progress, It Is Because I Have Bumped Into The Wall Of Language. Then I Draw Back With A Bloody Head. And Would Like To Go On.

Nothing Is More Horrible Than My Self In The Mirror Of Hysteria. Nothing Is More Vulgar Than My Style In The Hands Of Another. Toimitate Me Is To Punish Me.

Stupidity Is An Elemental Force For Which No Earthquake Is A Match.

The Little Stations Are Very Proud Because The Expresses Have To Pass Them By.

Intercourse With A Woman Is Sometimes A Satisfactory Substitute For Masturbation. But It Takes A Lot Of Imagination To Make It Work.

Art Is Something That Is So Perfectly Clear That No One Comprehends It.

I Have Often Been Asked To Be Fair And View A Matter From All Sides. I Did So, Hoping That Something Might Improve If I Viewed Allsides Of It. But The Result Was The Same. So I Went Back To Viewing Things Only From One Side, Which Saves Me A Lot Of Work And Disappointment. For It Is Comforting To Regard Something As Bad And To Be Able To Use One's Prejudice As An Excuse.

The Agitator Seizes The Word. The Artist Is Seized By It.

Humanity Is The Washerwoman Of Society That Wrings Out Its Dirty Laundry In Tears.

Someone Who Can Write Aphorisms Should Not Fritter Away His Time In Essays.

I Have Drawn From The Well Of Language Many A Thought Which I Do Not Have And Which I Could Not Put Into Words.

An Illusion Of Depth Often Occurs If A Blockhead Is A Muddlehead At The Same Time

It Is Better Not To Express What One Means Than To Express What One Does Not Mean.

It Is Not True That One Cannot Live Without A Woman. It Is Simply That One Cannot Have Lived Without One.

A Child Learns To Discard His Ideals, Whereas A Grown-up Never Wears Out His Short Pants.

Ideas Are Transplanted By Splitting, Thoughts By Sprouting.

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.

Psychoanalysis: A Rabbit That Was Swallowed By A Boa Constrictor Just Wanted To See What It Was Like In There.

Lord, Forgive Them, For They Know What They Do!

Psychoanalysis Is The Mental Illness It Purports To Cure

Most People Are Sick. But Only A Few Know That This Is Something They Can Be Proud Of. These Are The Psychoanalysts.

A Father's Pride, Laid On Thick, Has Always Made Me Wish That The Fellow Had At Least Experienced Some Pain During Procreation.

Journalists Write Because They Have Nothing To Say, And Have Something To Say Because They Write.

Nowadays The Thief Cannot Be Distinguished From His Victim. Neither Has Any Valuable Objects On Him.

Children Play Soldier. That Makes Sense. But Why Do Soldiers Play Children?

Heinrich Heine So Loosened The Corsets Of The German Language That Today Every Little Salesman Can Fondle Her Breasts.

German Language

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.

Sex Education Is Legitimate In That Girls Cannot Be Taught Soon Enough How Children Don't Come Into The World.

Feminine Passion Is To Masculine As An Epic Is To An Epigram.

Masculine And Feminine

Virginity Is The Ideal Of Those Who Want To Deflower.

Since The Day Man First Tried To Conquer Space, The Earth Has Been Mobilizing.

Nationalism Is The Love Which Ties Me To The Blockheads Of My Country, To The Insultors Of My Way Of Life, And To The Desecrators Of My Language.

A Woman Who Cannot Be Ugly Is Not Beautiful.

A Fine World In Which Man Reproaches Woman With Fulfilling His Heart's Desire!

A Man's Jealousy Is A Social Institution; A Woman's Prostitution Is An Instinct.

There Are Two Kinds Of Writers, Those Who Are And Those Who Aren't. With The First, Content And Form Belong Together Like Soul And Body; With The Second, They Match Each Other Like Body And Clothes.

Sexual Enlightenment Is That Hardhearted Process Which For Hygienic Reasons Forbids Young People To Satisfy Their Curiosity Themselves.

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.

Do Not Learn More Than You Absolutely Need To Get Through Life.

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.

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.

Psychology Is A Bus That Accompanies An Airplane.

To Be Sure, The Dog Is Loyal. But Why, On That Account, Should We Take Him As An Example? He Is Loyal To Man, Not To Other Dogs.

Progress Celebrates Victories Over Nature. Progress Makes Purses Out Of Human Skin. When People Were Traveling In Mail Coaches, The World Got Ahead Better Than It Does Now That Salesmen Fly Through The Air. What Good Is Speed If The Brain Has Oozed Out On The Way? How Will The Heirs Of This Age Be Taught The Most Basic Motions That Are Necessary To Activate The Most Complicated Machines? Nature Can Rely On Progress; It Will Avenge It For The Outrage It Has Perpetrated On It.

You Don't Even Live Once.

What The Teachers Digest, The Pupils Eat.

The Development Of Technology Will Leave Only One Problem: The Infirmity Of Human Nature.

On The Stage One Must Not Confuse The Nature Of A Personality With The Naturalness Of A Person.

One Must Read All Writers Twice--the Good As Well As The Bad. The One Kind Will Be Recognized; The Other, Unmasked.

Technology Is A Servant Who Makes So Much Noise Cleaning Up In The Next Room That His Master Cannot Make Music.

To Be Perfect, One Lacks Only A Defect.

Contemporaries Live From Second Hand To Mouth.

Family Life Is An Encroachment On Private Life.

It Is The Mission Of The Press To Disseminate Intellect And At The Same Time Destroy Receptivity To It.

Psychology Is As Useless As Directions For Using Poison.

When I Take Up My Pen, Nothing Can Happen To Me. Fate, Remember That.

The Discovery Of The North Pole Is One Of Those Realities Which Could Not Be Avoided. It Is The Wages Which Human Perseverance Pays Itself When It Thinks That Something Is Taking Too Long. The World Needed A Discoverer Of The North Pole, And In All Areas Of Social Activity, Merit Was Less Important Here Than Opportunity.

If You Wish To Form A Clear Judgment On Your Friends, Consult Your Dreams.

Culture Is The Tacit Agreement To Let The Means Of Subsistence Disappear Behind The Purpose Of Existence.

Artists Have A Right To Be Modest And A Duty To Be Vain.

Insights Into Erotic Life Belong To Art, Not Education. But Sometimes These Have To Be Spelled Out For The Illiterates. And It Ismainly A Matter Of Convincing The Illiterates, For They Are The Ones Who Write The Penal Code.

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.

Where Do I Find The Time For Not Reading So Many Books?

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.

Love And Art Do Not Embrace What Is Beautiful But What Is Made Beautiful By This Embrace.

The Immorality Of Men Triumphs Over The Amorality Of Women.

My Language Is The Common Prostitute That I Turn Into A Virgin.

A Healthy Man Is Content With A Woman. An Erotic Man Is Content With A Stocking To Get To A Woman. A Sick Man Is Content With Thestocking.

Children Today Laugh At Fathers Who Tell Them About Dragons. It Is Necessary To Make Fear A Required Subject; Otherwise Children Will Never Learn It.

Democracy Divides People Into Workers And Loafers. It Makes No Provision For Those Who Have No Time To Work.

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.

A Great Deal Of Learning Can Be Packed Into An Empty Head.

The Secret Of The Demagogue Is To Make Himself As Stupid As His Audience So They Believe They Are Clever As He.

Ingratitude Is Often Disproportionate To The Benefaction Received.

The Real Truths Are Those That Can Be Invented.

Many Share My Views With Me. But I Don't Share Them With Them.

He Who Sleeps Half A Day Has Won Half A Life.

The Extraordinary Ability Of A Woman To Forget Is Not The Same As The Talent Of A Lady Not To Be Able To Remember.

To Have No Ideas And Being Able To Express Them Is The Essence Of Journalism.

Psychoanalysts Are Father Confessors Who Like To Listen To The Sins Of The Father As Well.

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.

I And My Public Understand Each Other Very Well: It Does Not Hear What I Say, And I Don't Say What It Wants To Hear.

I Would Have Stage-fright If I Had To Speak With Every One Of The People Before Whom I Speak.

Humanity And Bestiality: When Will The Former Finally Be Uttered With The Flavor Of Hate And The Latter With The Flavor Of Love? Does A Lion Tear His Fellow Lion To Pieces?

How Unreliable Is The Woman Caught Being Faithful! Today She Is Faithful To You, Tomorrow To Another.

The Truth Is That The Newspaper Is Not A Place For Information To Be Given, Rather It Is Just Hollow Content, Or More Than That, A Provoker Of Content. If It Prints Lies About Atrocities, Real Atrocities Are The Result.

Since The Law Prohibits The Keeping Of Wild Animals And I Get No Enjoyment From Pets, I Prefer To Remain Unmarried.

A Poem Is Good Until One Knows By Whom It Is.

One Can Translate An Editorial But Not A Poem. For One Can Go Across The Border Naked But Not Without One's Skin; For, Unlike Clothes, One Cannot Get A New Skin.

The Mission Of The Press Is To Spread Culture While Destroying The Attention Span.

A Comprehensive Education Is A Well-stocked Pharmacy: But We Have No Assurance That Potassium Cyanide Will Not Be Administered Fora Head Cold.

The Pimp Is The Executive Organ Of Immorality. The Executive Organ Of Morality Is The Blackmailer.

In A Well-run Mental Household There Ought To Be A Thorough Cleaning At The Threshold Of Consciousness A Few Times A Year.

An Artist Should Make Concessions To The Listener. That Is Why Bruckner Dedicated One Of His Symphonies To The Good Lord.

Sound Opinions Are Valueless. What Matters Is Who Holds Them.

I Am Not For Women But Against Men.

Many Desire To Kill Me, And Many Wish To Spend An Hour Chatting With Me. The Law Protects Me From The Former.

In Berlin, Things Are Serious But Not Hopeless. In Vienna, They Are Hopeless But Not Serious.

Satire Chooses And Knows No Objects. It Arises By Fleeing From Them And Their Forcing Themselves Upon It.

It Is The Style Of Idealism To Console Itself For The Loss Of Something Old With The Ability To Gape At Something New.

This Is Something That I Cannot Get Over -- That A Whole Line Could Be Written By Half A Man, That A Work Could Be Built On The Quicksand Of A Character.

It Is Uplifting To Lose One?s Faith In A Reality Which Looks The Way It Is Described In A Newspaper.

It Is Either A Half-truth Or A Truth And A Half.

An Idea's Birth Is Legitimate If One Has The Feeling That One Is Catching Oneself Plagiarizing Oneself.

A Historian Is Not Always A Prophet Facing Backwards, But A Journalist Is Always Someone Who Afterwards Knew Everything Beforehand.

Let Language Be The Divining Rod That Finds The Sources Of Thought.

Parliamentarianism Means Putting Political Prostitution In Barracks.

Morality Is A Venereal Disease. Its Primary Stage Is Called Virtue; Its Secondary Stage, Boredom; Its Tertiary Stage, Syphilis.

An Aphorism Is Never Exactly True; It Is Either A Half-truth Or One-and-a-half Truths.

Speech Is The Mother, Not The Handmaid, Of Thought.

Life Is An Effort That Deserves A Better Cause.

Stupidity Gets Up Early; That Is Why Events Are Accustomed To Happening In The Morning.

What Is A Historian? Someone Who Doesn't Write Well Enough To Work On A Daily.

The Real End Of The World Is The Destruction Of The Spirit; The Other Kind Depends On The Insignificant Attempt To See Whether After Such A Destruction The World Can Go On.

How Is The World Ruled And Led To War? Diplomats Lie To Journalists And Believe These Lies When They See Them In Print.

There Is A Shortage Of Clerks. Everyone Is Going Into Journalism.

The Devil Is An Optimist If He Thinks He Can Make People Worse Than They Are.

Progress, Under Whose Feet The Grass Mourns And The Forest Turns Into Paper From Which Newspaper Plants Grow, Has Subordinated The Purpose Of Life To The Means Of Subsistence And Turned Us Into The Nuts And Bolts For Our Tools.

There Are People Who Can Never Forgive A Beggar For Their Not Having Given Him Anything.

We Are Sacrificing Ourselves For Our Ready-made Goods; We Are Consumers And Live In Such A Way That The Means May Consume The End.

To Me It's Still A Greater Miracle When A Fly Flies Than When A Human Being Undertakes To Do So.

The Unattractive Thing About Chauvinism Is Not So Much The Aversion To Other Nations As The Love Of One's Own.

Penalties Serve To Deter Those Who Are Not Inclined To Commit Any Crimes.

Democracy Means The Opportunity To Be Everyone's Slave.

Ask Your Neighbor Only About Things You Know Better Yourself. Then His Advice Could Prove Valuable.

Better Yourself

Talent Is Often A Defect In Character.

Psychoanalysis Is That Mental Illness For Which It Regards Itself As Therapy.

You'd Be Surprised How Hard It Can Often Be To Translate An Action Into An Idea.

The Streets Of Vienna Are Paved With Culture, The Streets Of Other Cities With Asphalt.

When I Want To Go To Sleep, I Must First Get A Whole Menagerie Of Voices To Shut Up. You Wouldn't Believe What A Racket They Make In My Room.

Education Is A Crutch With Which The Foolish Attack The Wise To Prove That They Are Not Idiots.

Curses On The Law! Most Of My Fellow Citizens Are The Sorry Consequences Of Uncommitted Abortions.

Scandal Begins When The Police Put A Stop To It.

I And Life: The Case Was Settled Chivalrously. The Opponents Parted Without Having Made Up.

The Ultimate Aim Of Psychoanalysis Is To Attribute Art To Mental Weakness, And Then To Trace The Weakness Back To The Point Where, According To Analytic Dogma, It Originated Namely, The Lavatory.

Satires Which The Censor Can Understand Are Justly Forbidden

What Are All The Orgies Of Bacchus When Compared To The Intoxication Of Someone Who Completely Surrenders To Continence!

When I Read, It Is Not Acted Literature; But What I Write Is Written Acting.

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