"The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love."
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Quote collection
Karl Kraus quotes (page 11 of 14)
263 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another."
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"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."
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"Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain."
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"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."
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"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."
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"A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!"
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"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."
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"What is a historian? Someone who doesn't write well enough to work on a daily."
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"Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves."
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"A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality."
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"Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth."
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"On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person."
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"Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks."
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"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."
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"The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life."
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"A father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation."
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"Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison."
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"To be perfect, one lacks only a defect."
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"Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting."
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