Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus
Karl Krauswas an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He directed his satire at the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics. The Austrian author Stefan Zweig once called Kraus "the master of venomous ridicule"...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth28 April 1874
CountryAustria
air people brain
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.
beautiful art embrace
Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.
sex masturbation substitutes
A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.
book literature geography
A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.
emptiness empty deals
A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.
half half-truth
It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half.
today literature patient
Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.
age ink veins
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.
ideas splitting
Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.
mirrors looks world
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.
time writing deadline
A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time
peace war expectations
War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.
education teacher
Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.
mean agreement civilization
Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.