An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.

Not greeting people isn't enough. One also doesn't greet people one doesn't know.

I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails.

Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears.

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

One cleans someone else's threshold of consciousness only if one's own home is dirty.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Imagination has the right to feast in the shade of the tree that it turns into a forest.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything.

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature.

Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well.

I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.

Most people only do what they are asked to do; success comes to those who do a little more.

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.

I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.

In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.

On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

If someone calls me vain and mean, I know that he trusts me and has something to confess to me.

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.

Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged.

To me it's still a greater miracle when a fly flies than when a human being undertakes to do so.

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.

To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.

Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?

Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.

A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.

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