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Poems List

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
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Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.
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Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.
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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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Psychoanalysis is that mental illnes for which it regards itself a therapy.
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Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn too soon how children do not come into the world.
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War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
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Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
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An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.
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How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

Aphorisms and More Aphorisms (1909)

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Karl Kraus was born in 1874, in Jičín, in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. His work is marked by a profound skepticism towards the society, politics, and culture of his time. He was a relentless critic of the press, war, and bourgeois hypocrisy, using an aphoristic style and corrosive humor. In addition to essays and articles, he wrote plays and poems. His influence extended to various areas, inspiring avant-garde movements and later thinkers. He died in Vienna in 1936.