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The triumph of morality: A thief who has broken into a bedroom claims his sense of shame had been outraged, and by threatening theoccupants with exposure of an immoral act he blackmails them into not bringing charges for burglary.

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
Morality
Thieves
Broken
Immoral
Sense
Threatening
Burglary
Bedroom
Blackmail
Bringing
Charges
Triumph
Outraged
Claims
Thief
Shame
Exposure

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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
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Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
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He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.
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Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.
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Many talents preserve their precociousness right into old age.
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We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods we are consumers and live in such a way that the means may consume the end.
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The new psychiatrists say that everything and anything can be traced back to sexual causes. Their method, for example, could be explained as the eroticism of father confessors.
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Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.
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My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions.
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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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Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.
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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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Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.
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Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.
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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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The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.
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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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I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.
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