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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

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
Handmaiden
Language
Mother
Thought

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Medicine: Your money and your life!
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Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged.
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One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.
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Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.
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A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.
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I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.
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Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.
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The little stations are very proud because the expresses have to pass them by.
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When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.
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This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.
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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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A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.
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Imagination has the right to feast in the shade of the tree that it turns into a forest.
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There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body with the second, they match each other like body and clothes.
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A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
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Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood.
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It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
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Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.
Karl Kraus
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The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.
Karl Kraus
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The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.
Karl Kraus