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.
Karl KrausIt is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one.
Karl KrausIt 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.
Karl KrausLet 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.
Karl KrausDemocracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
Karl KrausThe pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.
Karl KrausHow is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Karl KrausA father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation.
Karl KrausWhat do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?
Karl KrausNationalism 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 KrausIn 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.
Karl KrausJournalist: 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.
Karl KrausThere 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.
Karl KrausThe 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 KrausSocial reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.
Karl KrausPsychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.
Karl KrausA 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 KrausIt is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it.
Karl KrausMost people are sick. But only a few know that this is something they can be proud of. These are the psychoanalysts.
Karl KrausCulture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.
Karl KrausSexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.
Karl KrausIntercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
Karl Kraus