Kraus, Kraus, Kraus: Pro Domo et Mundo

Chance Events, Chance Thoughts

I’d like to strictly distinguish my existence [Dasein] from their attendance [Dabeisein]. I live, they just turned up.

The little stations between the major stations are proud of the fact that express trains have to pass them by.

The type of mind that can say what everything is but not what anything seems to be.

Hatred has to make you productive. Or else it’s more sensible to find love in your heart.

The silly sausage who calls a pig a pig commits the supreme act of ingratitude.

Medical proverb: The fathers’ trousers, worn and done, are the neuroses of the son.

Scepticism has progressed from: Que sais-je? to: Do I know?

The modern father: My son’s doing the wrong thing. He’s a mystic.

There’s room enough in the tiniest hut, but not in the same city, for a couple who are blissfully in love.

I’m not in favour of women, just against men.

I once knew a Don Juan of chastity whose Leporello was not even capable of compiling a list of all the ice maidens in town.

A slap-stick threw a toothpick behind a curtain – there was a huge crash. Then he threw a needle – another huge crash. Then he threw a piece of paper – again, a huge crash. Next he took a feather, raised his hand and – yet again, a huge crash. But he hadn’t even thrown it – so he went Woot! and congratulated himself on having put one over the causal nexus. The essence of this kind of humour is the notion that the echo of human action is louder than its call and that one best demonstrates to echoes how impertinent they are by not answering them with any further call.

Diagnosis is one of the most widespread diseases.

The aesthetes had divided things among themselves. Dr. Arthur got death, Richard got life, Hugo got the Church of Holy Devotion together with the evening sky, Poldi got the entire collection of the Ambraser Gallery and Felix got all that together and lots more plus the Renaissance.

Pro Domo et Mundo

Woe betide the age in which art doesn’t make the earth less sure of itself, in which the artist rather than man faints before the abyss separating the two of them!

Art brings life into disorder. Time and again, what mankind’s poets do is re-establish chaos.

Culture comes to an end when the barbarians break free from its midst.

The modern demise of the world will come to pass when the machine enters the phase of perfection and human beings are proven broke and unfixable. The point at which the automobile will no longer succeed in bringing the driver into forwards motion.

Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over Nature.

When a culture senses that its end has come it calls in the priest.

If I’m supposed to believe in something that can’t be seen I’d sooner believe in miracles than in microscopic creepy crawlies.

The legalist declares the responsible party guilty as well as those who know no better.
The humanitarian declares the responsible party guilty and those that know no better innocent.
The anarchist declares both innocent.
The man of culture declares those who know no better guilty and those who did know better innocent.

That which is brought against me as an objection is often one of my premises. For instance the notion that my polemic tears at life’s heart.

Injustice is necessary or else we would never have done.

My glosses need commentaries. Otherwise they’re too easily understood.

Is it my fault that M actually exists? Didn’t I make him up all the same? If he were a general object of mockery, I’d choose someone better. If he makes a claim for damages because he has been insulted by satire then he insults the satirist.

I’m not sure whether the philistine represents a sort of cosmic vacuum or whether he is simply the wall which is separated from the life of the spirit by Toricellian empty space. But whether he's vacuous or just limited, it's clear he's compelled to react to culture with enmity on principle. For what culture does is to make him conscious [gibt ihm ein Bewußtsein] without making him any the more existent [ohne ihm ein Sein zu geben], driving him to a desperation whose logical form is cogito ergo non sum. It would drive him to suicide were it not so cruel as to force him to prove his own non-existence while still alive. Whether it’s a painting being painted or a witticism being made, the philistine is fighting a battle for his very life when he shuts his eyes or stops up his ears.

Many a man I’ve had dealings with in this my many-sided life has something against me or knows something about me. They will all be able to prove something against me – even if it is only that I had dealings with them.


Do I advise you to kick out of home the error that you gave birth to and substitute it with a more veracious adoptee?

Ask your neighbour about what you yourself are already better informed about. His counsel will then be valuable.

What another doesn’t know I decide autocratically. But I’m glad to ask him about what I already know.

The weakling has doubts before the moment of decision, the strong man after it.

It’s no bad thing to think of most things as being of no significance, but of everything as significant.

Only in the ecstasy of linguistic conception do worlds come to be out of chaos.

By night, at my desk, pen in hand, in an advanced state of writerly ecstasy, I’d find the presence of a woman more disturbing than a Germanist interfering in the bedroom.

I don’t relish sticking my nose into my own private business.

I refer to the topic by talking about myself. They stick to the topic but refer to themselves.

I ask no one for a light. I don’t want to be in anyone’s debt. Neither in life, love or literature. And yet I’m definitely a smoker.

When I demonstrate that the world has lost its way by pointing to symptoms of its decline, one of the lost ones always comes and asks me what the symptoms are supposed to do about themselves. They do what they do because they have to – they don't enjoy it. – Alas, I don’t enjoy it either, though I have to too.

The truly true truths are the ones that can be made up. [C.f. Se non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato]

Life is a struggle that would be worthy of a better cause.

The external world is a tiresome side-effect of a sustained condition of uneasiness.