Quotes from Karl Kraus

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.

I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Most people only do what they are asked to do; success comes to those who do a little more.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

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.

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.

What the teachers digest, the pupils eat.

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.

Family life is an encroachment on private life.

Medicine: "Your money and your life!

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Journalist: 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.

An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time