333 Quotes by Karl Kraus

If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman’s enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.

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.

You’d be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.

A “seducer” who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.

Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven’t heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people; everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.

An idea’s birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

I don’t like to meddle in my private affairs.

A man’s eroticism is a woman’s sexuality.

How powerful social mores are! Only a spider’s web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.