Karl Kraus Quotes

198 Sourced Quotes

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.

Karl Kraus
There is a shortage of clerks. Everyone is going into journalism.

Karl Kraus
When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received.

Karl Kraus
Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
Technology is a servant who makes so much noise cleaning up in the next room that his master cannot make music.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head.

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

Karl Kraus
Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks.

Karl Kraus
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?

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
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.

Karl Kraus
An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time

Karl Kraus