Quote

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.

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
Way
Dark
Bother
Actors
Crowds
Individual
Sees
Cannot
Individuals
Doe
Theater
Able
Mass
Distinguish
Nothing
Actor
Disturbing
Must
Audience
Crowd

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A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.
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Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.
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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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Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.
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Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.
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Talent is often a defect in character.
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Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.
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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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Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer.
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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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I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.
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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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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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Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.
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I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.
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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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Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
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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 art of an actress is sublimated sexuality. But off the stage the fire must be able to reconvert the steam into body.
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I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.
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