Dicta and Contradicta: More Karl Kraus

I’ve noticed that the butterflies are dying out. Or is it just that children are the only ones who see them? When I was ten I associated exclusively with Admiralen in the fields of Weidlingau and I can say it was the proudest company I’ve ever kept in my life. Trauermantel, Tagpfauenauge and Zitronenfalter made for the extra colour of one’s youthful existence. Vanessa Io, Vanessa cardui – oh indulgence of indulgences! When I returned many years later, they had all disappeared. The midday sun blasted away as ever, but not a single flicker of colour was to be spotted. Instead scraps of newspaper were scattered about the meadows. Later I learned that wood from the forests had been requisitioned the production of printing paper. In short, with information in such abundance, the butterflies were considered to be in oversupply. One of our magazine’s well-wishers actually sent in the very last butterfly and a colleague took the opportunity to skewer it on his pen and look into the causes of its fatal isolation. The world (it was found) is in flight from all colour of personality; from which one protects oneself by getting organised. The butterflies were the only ones who’d neglected to organise themselves. And thus it came about that sub-editors, glimmering hacks, sip away at the flowery chalices of old and infuse their prose with the perfume of their experiences. Even the monotonal Kohlweisslinge (cabbage whites) had to give way, though the journos might plausibly have come to some agreement owing to a certain kinship between them. The war to the death with those little flying creatures represents the triumph of newspaper culture. Butterflies and women, beauty and spirit, nature and art get a painful taste of what it means for a Sunday paper to have 150 pages. Mankind hits out against butterflies with fly-swats. And wipes the colourful dust from its fingers, because they have to be clean for printers’ ink.

Prejudice is an indispensable servant who stands at the front door and turns away nasty impressions. The trick though is not to be thrown out by your servant yourself.

My spirit is stirred by my senses, my senses are stirred by the spirit of women. But what of the body? The body I think and feel into non-existence. Experimenta in corpore vili.

Hypocrites are not hateful because they don’t practise what they preach, but because they don’t preach what they practise. A man who condemns moral hypocrisy has to take care not to be mistaken for a friend of morality, which the hypocrites at least betray in private. It is not betrayal of morality that is worthy of condemnation but morality itself. For it is the sum and substance of hypocrisy. The scandal that needs to be exposed is not that they drink wine, but that they preach water. To show up contradictions between theory and practice is always an awkward business. What do the actions of the mass of men mean compared with the thoughts of a single individual? The moralist could well be in earnest in his crusade against a brand of immorality, to which he himself has fallen victim. Now if a man preaches wine, he could even be forgiven for drinking water. Sure – he contradicts himself. Yet he at least brings it about that the world's consumption of wine increases.

God be thanked I have often shot over the target but seldom beside it.

In earlier times I often got amorally indignant. But morality gets the upper hand here, there and everywhere and one gives it up.

A paradox comes into being when knowledge that's ripe before its time collides with the idiocy of the times.

Antitheses seem to be no more than mere mechanical inversions. Yet what a wealth of experience, suffering and knowledge one has to acquire before one may turn a word on its head!

It is almost ten years since I did any waking up to myself. The last time I woke up I founded a magazine in which to go to war against people.

My public and I understand one another very well: it doesn’t hear what say and I don’t say what it'd like to hear.

The masses don’t understand the German language; and I can’t tell it to them in journalese.

You get so little recognition, it's enough to drive you megalo-manic!

I can proudly say that I’ve spent days and nights reading nothing, and that I use every free minute, iron of will, gradually acquiring an encyclopaedic lack of education.

How much material I’d have if there weren’t any events!

He who wants to do no business with the world should let it be known that he intends to reduce his stock of acquaintances and to clear out his experiences at something less than their purchase price.

I've developed over the years into a hectic pursuer of social disadvantages. I keep on the trail of every chance to get rid of an acquaintance or lose an influential connection. Maybe one day I'll pull off one of the top jobs after all!

I was rarely loved, but always hated.

Hold your passions in check but guard against giving reason free reign.

Vanity is the indispensable guardian of a godly gift. It is nonsense to demand that a woman should relinquish her beauty or a man his intellect so as not to rub poverty up the wrong way. And it is foolish to claim that something valuable shouldn't draw attention to itself so as not to betray the worthlessness of another. Someone who accuses me of vanity puts himself under suspicion of envy – which is not as pretty a trait by a long shot. Someone who dares deny me my vanity however puts me under suspicion of impoverishment.

The sensuality of women needs as little of a tangible pretext as the artistic genius of men. The more unlikely the trigger, the more lavishly it unfolds itself. Spirit is bound to no class prejudice and lust is a perspective on life.

When we cast off an error, superficial characters continue to accuse us of the error and meticulous ones of inconsistency.

Wise men relent, but only those who got wise through suffering.

The faker doesn’t believe in anything genuine. And if he were to believe he still couldn’t comprehend how anyone can be genuine in an age when nobody has any real need to be genuine.

Look, that’s still not the right sort of loneliness in which to busy yourself with yourself.

The only part of an ideal which ought to be attainable is called martyrdom.

What will torture you are lost possibilities. To be certain something is impossible is already to have gained.

Nationalism – that love which binds me to the numbskulls of my nation, to those who offend my ways and desecrate my language.

It’s not true illumination if the faculty of understanding can't make a will-o’-the-wisp of it.

The philosopher thinks his way into daily life from eternity, the poet into eternity from daily life.

In a well-ordered intellectual household some thorough tidying up needs doing on the threshold of consciousness a few times a year.

If you want a clear-cut estimate of your friends, consult your dreams.

We often have to reflect to discover what we're happy about. But we always know what saddens us.