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I Master Only The Language Of Others. Mine Does With Me What It Wants.

-Karl Kraus

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I Master Only The

Karl Kraus

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I Master Only The Language Of Others. Mine Does With Me What It Wants.

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A Historian Is Often Only A Journalist Facing Backwards.

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

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

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.

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

Parliamentarianism Means Putting Political Prostitution In Barracks.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Art Of An Actress Is Sublimated Sexuality. But Off The Stage The Fire Must Be Able To Reconvert The Steam Into Body.

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.

Medicine: "your Money And Your Life!

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

Democracy Means The Opportunity To Be Everyone's Slave.

Ingratitude Is Often Disproportionate To The Benefaction Received.

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

Education Is What Most Receive, Many Pass On, And Few Possess.

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

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

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

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

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

Masculine And Feminine

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.

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

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

If The Reporter Has Killed Our Imagination With His Truth, He Threatens Our Life With His Lies.

Today's Literature: Prescriptions Written By Patients.

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

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

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

A Woman Who Cannot Be Ugly Is Not Beautiful.

The Triumph Of Morality: A Thief Who Has Broken Into A Bedroom Claims His Sense Of Shame Had Been Outraged, And By Threatening Theoccupants With Exposure Of An Immoral Act He Blackmails Them Into Not Bringing Charges For Burglary.

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

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

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

The Esthete Stands In The Same Relation To Beauty As The Pornographer Stands To Love, And The Politician Stands To Life.

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

News Reports Stand Up As People, And People Wither Into Editorials. Clichés Walk Around On Two Legs While Men Are Having Theirs Shot Off.

Truth Is A Clumsy Servant That Breaks The Dishes While Washing Them.

Matrimony Is The Union Of Meanness And Martyrdom.

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.

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

I Trim My Opponents To Fit My Arrows.

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

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.

The Sound Principle Of A Topsy-turvy Lifestyle In The Framework Of An Upside-down World Order Has Stood Every Test.

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

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

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

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.

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

So-called Psychoanalysis Is The Occupation Of Lustful Rationalists Who Trace Everything In The World To Sexual Causes--with The Exception Of Their Occupation.

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.

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

Journalist: A Person Without Any Ideas But With An Ability To Express Them; A Writer Whose Skill Is Improved By A Deadline: The More Time He Has, The Worse He Writes.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

German Language

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.

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.

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.

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

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

One Of The Most Widespread Diseases Is Diagnosis.

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

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

My Respect For The Inconsiderable Is Assuming Gigantic Dimensions.

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

If Children Had Been Told That They Could Not Blow Their Noses, This Alone Would Make Adults Blush.

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

Psychoanalysis Is The Mental Illness It Purports To Cure

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 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.

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

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

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

Morality Is The Tendency To Pour Out The Baby With The Bathwater.

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

Family Life Is An Encroachment On Private Life.

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.

Diplomacy Is A Game Of Chess In Which The Nations Are Checkmated.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Most People Only Do What They Are Asked To Do; Success Comes To Those Who Do A Little More.

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.

Moral Responsibility Is What Is Lacking In A Man When He Demands It Of A Woman.

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.

Talent Is Often A Defect In Character.

Language Is The Mother Of Thought, Not Its Handmaiden.

A Man's Eroticism Is A Woman's Sexuality.

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

The Immorality Of Men Triumphs Over The Amorality Of Women.

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

Satires Which The Censor Can Understand Are Justly Forbidden

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Me All Men Are Equal: There Are Jackasses Everywhere, And I Have The Same Contempt For Them All.

A Woman Occasionally Is Quite A Serviceable Substitute For Masturbation.

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

The Difference Between Psychiatrists And Other Mentally Disturbed People Is Something Like The Relationship Between Concave And Convex Madness.

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

Scandal Begins When The Police Put A Stop To It.

Many Talents Preserve Their Precociousness Right Into Old Age.

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

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

I Am Already So Popular That Anyone Who Vilifies Me Becomes More Popular Than I Am.

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

Mankind Became Hysterical In The Middle Ages Because It Poorly Repressed The Sexual Impressions Of Its Greek Boyhood.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Better Yourself

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

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

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

The Trouble With Germans Is Not That They Fire Shells, But That They Engrave Them With Quotations From Kant.

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

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

What The Teachers Digest, The Pupils Eat.

They Judge Lest They Be Judged.

A Philistine Is Habitually Bored And Looks For Things That Won't Bore Him. An Artist Finds Things Boring, But Is Never Bored.

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

Squeeze Human Nature Into The Straitjacket Of Criminal Justice And Crime Will Appear.

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

Hate Must Make A Man Productive. Otherwise One Might As Well Love.

Psychology Is A Bus That Accompanies An Airplane.

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

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

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

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

Many Women Would Like To Dream With Men Without Sleeping With Them. Someone Should Point Out To Them That This Is Utterly Impossible.

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

Life Is An Effort That Deserves A Better Cause.

Morality Is A Burglar's Tool Whose Merit Lies In Never Being Left Behind At The Scene Of The Crime.

I Have Decided Many A Stylistic Problem First By My Head, Then By Heads Or Tails.

I Master Only The Language Of Others. Mine Does With Me What It Wants.

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

The Real Truths Are Those That Can Be Invented.

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.

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.

A Bibliophile Has Approximately The Same Relationship To Literature As A Philatelist To Geography.

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.

Cosmetics Is The Science Of A Woman's Cosmos.

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

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

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

You Don't Even Live Once.

I Saw A Poet Chase A Butterfly In A Meadow. He Put His Net On A Bench Where A Boy Sat Reading A Book. It's A Misfortune That It Is Usually The Other Way Round.

Ideas Are Transplanted By Splitting, Thoughts By Sprouting.

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

If One Reads A Newspaper Only For Information, One Does Not Learn The Truth, Not Even The Truth About The Paper. The Truth Is That The Newspaper Is Not A Statement Of Contents But The Contents Themselves; And More Than That, It Is An Instigator.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Like To Hold A Monologue With Women. But A Dialogue With Myself Is More Stimulating.

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

Christian Morality Prefers Remorse To Precede Lust, And Then Lust Not To Follow.

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

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

Love Thy Neighbor

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.

To Be Human Is Erroneous.

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.

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?

A Weak Man Has Doubts Before A Decision; A Strong Man Has Them Afterwards.

How Do Wars Start? Diplomats Tell Lies To Journalists, Then Believe What They Read.

Solitude Would Be Ideal If You Could Pick The People To Avoid.

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

Science Is Spectral Analysis. Art Is Light Synthesis.

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

Anesthesia: Wounds Without Pain. Neurasthenia: Pain Without Wounds.

Contemporaries Live From Second Hand To Mouth.

In A Hollow Head There Is Much Room For Knowledge.

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

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

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