Karl Kraus
Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.Collection: Dream
Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.Collection: Art
The art of an actress is sublimated sexuality. But off the stage the fire must be able to reconvert the steam into body.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Media
To me it's still a greater miracle when a fly flies than when a human being undertakes to do so.Collection: Miracle
Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.Collection: Ideas
Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.Collection: Thieves
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.Collection: Ideas
Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.Collection: Psychology
Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.Collection: Satire
Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received.Collection: Gratitude
Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.Collection: Fleeing
What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence!Collection: Sex
In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Writing
If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.Collection: Children
A man's jealousy is a social institution; a woman's prostitution is an instinct.Collection: Jealousy
Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Music
The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it.Collection: Artist
On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.Collection: Personality
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.Collection: Real
The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.Collection: Pimp
Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.Collection: People
Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.Collection: Hands
Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.Collection: Cancer
What is a historian? Someone who doesn't write well enough to work on a daily.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Writing
A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Doe
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Long
Many talents preserve their precociousness right into old age.Collection: Age
There is a shortage of clerks. Everyone is going into journalism.Collection: Clerks
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.Collection: Perseverance
A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.Collection: Might
Let language be the divining rod that finds the sources of thought.Collection: Language
Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Writing
When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Thinking
Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.Collection: Philosophical
A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.Collection: Art
I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.Collection: Arrows