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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.

-Karl Kraus

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The Heroes Of Obtrusiveness,

Karl Kraus

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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.

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

Jealousy Is A Dog's Bark Which Attracts Thieves.

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

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

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

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

Ingratitude Is Often Disproportionate To The Benefaction Received.

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

Today's Literature: Prescriptions Written By Patients.

Scandal Begins When The Police Put A Stop To It.

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

I Trim My Opponents To Fit My Arrows.

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

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

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

Language Is The Mother Of Thought, Not Its Handmaiden.

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

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

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

The Immorality Of Men Triumphs Over The Amorality Of Women.

Psychology Is As Useless As Directions For Using Poison.

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.

One's Need For Loneliness Is Not Satisfied If One Sits At A Table Alone. There Must Be Empty Chairs As Well.

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

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 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 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.

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

Many Talents Preserve Their Precociousness Right Into Old Age.

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.

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

Talent Is Often A Defect In Character.

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.

Medicine: "your Money And Your Life!

Psychoanalysis Is The Mental Illness It Purports To Cure

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

Cosmetics Is The Science Of A Woman's Cosmos.

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.

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

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

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

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

Chastity Always Takes Its Toll. In Some It Produces Pimples; In Others, Sex Laws.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Contemporaries Live From Second Hand To Mouth.

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

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

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

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

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

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 Plagiarist Should Be Made To Copy The Author A Hundred Times.

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

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.

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

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

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

In A Hollow Head There Is Much Room For Knowledge.

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

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

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

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.

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

Satires Which The Censor Can Understand Are Justly Forbidden

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

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

You Don't Even Live Once.

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

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

Love Thy Neighbor

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A Pun, Though Despicable In Itself, Can Be The Noblest Vehicle Of An Artistic Intention By Serving As The Abbreviation Of A Wittyview. It Can Be A Social Criticism In The Form Of An Epigram.

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

My Respect For The Inconsiderable Is Assuming Gigantic Dimensions.

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

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

Corruption Is Worse Than Prostitution. The Latter Might Endanger The Morals Of An Individual, The Former Invariably Endangers The Morals Of The Entire Country.

Moral Corruption

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Am Not For Women But Against Men.

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

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

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

To Be Perfect, One Lacks Only A Defect.

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.

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.

They Judge Lest They Be Judged.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Better Yourself

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

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

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

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.

One Of The Most Widespread Diseases Is Diagnosis.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

A Woman Who Cannot Be Ugly Is Not Beautiful.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Family Life Is An Encroachment On Private Life.

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

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.

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

There Is A Cultural Taste Which Tries Very Hard To Get Rid Of The Lice In A Fur Coat. There Is Another Which Tolerates The Lice And Thinks The Coat Can Be Worn With Them In It. And Finally There Is A Taste Which Regards The Lice As The Most Important Thing About The Coat And Consequently Places The Coat At The Lice's Disposal.

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

German Language

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

The Real Truths Are Those That Can Be Invented.

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

Matrimony Is The Union Of Meanness And Martyrdom.

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.

Life Is An Effort That Deserves A Better Cause.

The World Has Become Uglier Since It Began To Look Into A Mirror Every Day; So Let Us Settle For The Mirror Image And Do Without An Inspection Of The Original.

Ideas Are Transplanted By Splitting, Thoughts By Sprouting.

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.

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.

Sorrento, August. For Two Weeks Now I Haven't Heard A German Word Or Understood An Italian One. This Way One Can Manage To Live With People; Everything Goes Like Clockwork And No Irksome Misunderstanding Can Arise.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

If Something Is Stolen From You, Don't Go To The Police. They're Not Interested. Don't Go To A Psychologist Either, Because He's Interested In Only One Thing: That It Was Really You Who Did The Stealing.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A Historian Is Often Only A Journalist Facing Backwards.

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

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.

Not Greeting People Isn't Enough. One Also Doesn't Greet People One Doesn't Know.

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.

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