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Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria. Nothing is more vulgar than my style in the hands of another. Toimitate me is to punish me.

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
Mirrors
Horrible
Style
Another
Hysteria
Hands
Punish
Nothing
Vulgar
Self
Imitation
Mirror

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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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If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.
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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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In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.
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A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.
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To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.
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Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.
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My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions.
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Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
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Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.
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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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Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.
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On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.
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Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
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Stupidity gets up early that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning.
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How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.
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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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The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.
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Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.
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I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.
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