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Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue its secondary stage, boredom its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Karl Kraus

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Karl Kraus
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: March 28
Died: 1936
Died: June 12
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Jicin
Literature
Primaries
Primary
Boredom
Morality
Disease
Tertiary
Virtue
Venereal
Stage
Syphilis
Called
Secondary

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The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it.
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Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.
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My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions.
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Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.
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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.
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In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd.
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Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
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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.
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Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven't heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.
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A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered fora head cold.
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The real end of the world is the destruction of the spirit the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such a destruction the world can go on.
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You don't even live once.
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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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Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.
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Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.
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A cigar, said the altruist, a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come around mine is always lit.
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If one reads a newspaper only for information, one does not learn the truth, not even the truth about the paper. The truth is that the newspaper is not a statement of contents but the contents themselves and more than that, it is an instigator.
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Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.
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To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.
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Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
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