Karl Kraus Quotes - Page 4

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.

A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.

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.

A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?

The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature.

Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.

You don't even live once.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

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.

In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.

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.

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.

When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room.

Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.

Let language be the divining rod that finds the sources of thought.

Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried.

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

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.

The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.