Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.

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

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

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

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

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

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

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

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

It's interesting, isn't it? Being in the world.

There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.

I'm actually incapable of lying. I'm like a parody of a person who can't lie.

Better than the one who knows what is right is the one who loves what is right.

The government only makes restrictive rules, they dont show you what to do so you know, OK, heres where we need this many apartments, with open space, playgrounds, kindergartens.

What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge but its quality. You can know many things without knowing the most important.

I write about power, that's my real subject - how you get it, what you do with it, how you abuse it. I'm equally wary of liberals and conservatives.

And you take care, too, Shahara. Remember the lies we tell ourselves to survive seldom bring peace to our souls. (Nero)

Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

Then, early, early, early in the morning-just as in countless Disney films-I heard a rooster crow. But guess what? They don't do it just once.