Karl Kraus (1874 – 1936)
Austrian journalist, satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet.
The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes a man.
Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.
Most writers have no other quality than the reader: taste. But the latter has the better taste, because he does not write - and the best if he does not read.
There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.
Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
Family life is an encroachment on private life.
Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.
Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!
Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.
I am not for women but against men.
Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have.
Solitude would be an ideal state if one were able to pick the people one avoids.
Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution.
What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory?
It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.
Nothing is more unfathomable than a woman's superficiality.
Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love.