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A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.

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
Truth
Pardonable
Without
Leniency
Always
Merits
Compulsion
Merit
Tells
Lying
White

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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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A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.
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Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
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A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.
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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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Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.
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Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
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Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.
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Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.
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A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.
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My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions.
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An aphorism is never exactly true it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
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That an author takes a bow is not humility but presumption. What does the paleface want on the stage afterwards? But before the performance he had even less business there--and paying him royalties is equivalent to cheating the actors.
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A weak man has doubts before a decision a strong man has them afterwards.
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When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.
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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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Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.
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Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.
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Medicine: Your money and your life!
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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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