Karl Kraus
Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.Collection: Hate
How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.Collection: Powerful
I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.Collection: Conversation
News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. Clichés walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Clothes
A father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation.Collection: Pain
Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood.Collection: Greek
A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has timeCollection: Time
Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.Collection: Beautiful
To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.Collection: Perfect One
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Age
When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Mirrors
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.Collection: Believe
I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.Collection: People
When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.Collection: Fate
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.Collection: Criticism
"A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come around; mine is always lit."Collection: Men
What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?Collection: Beautiful
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Cheating
Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.Collection: Freedom
Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.Collection: Erotic
An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.Collection: Artist
It is uplifting to lose one?s faith in a reality which looks the way it is described in a newspaper.Collection: Uplifting
I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.Collection: Ideas
Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Mirrors
One must read all writers twice--the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked.Collection: Reading
My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions.Collection: Respect
Technology is a servant who makes so much noise cleaning up in the next room that his master cannot make music.Collection: Music
The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.Collection: Women
Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.Collection: Advice
A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.Collection: History
Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cureCollection: Literature
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.Collection: Art
One cleans someone else's threshold of consciousness only if one's own home is dirty.Collection: Dirty
In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.Collection: Vienna
To have no ideas and being able to express them is the essence of journalism.Collection: Essence
Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbiddenCollection: Censorship
The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.Collection: Art
The little stations are very proud because the expresses have to pass them by.Collection: Pride
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.Collection: Nature
Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.Collection: Mother
Imagination has the right to feast in the shade of the tree that it turns into a forest.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Dog
The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.Collection: Women