“Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.”

—  Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients." by Karl Kraus?
Karl Kraus photo
Karl Kraus 94
Czech playwright and publicist 1874–1936

Related quotes

André Gide photo

“It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

C'est avec de beaux sentiments qu'on fait de la mauvaise littérature.
Letter to François Mauriac (1929)

“All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"All Literature", from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

Alfred Adler photo

“He used to say to his melancholia patients:
"You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
George Saintsbury photo

“When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.”

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

Source: A Last Vintage, p. 172

Karl Kraus photo

“When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Sketches of English Literature, Vol II, p. 36 http://books.google.com/books?id=V9AtAAAAYAAJ, as translated by Henry Colburn
Context: In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

“Latin literature would almost certainly have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“A literature that is alive does not live by yesterday's clock, nor by today's but by tomorrow's.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: A literature that is alive does not live by yesterday's clock, nor by today's but by tomorrow's. It is a sailor sent aloft: from the masthead he can see foundering ships, icebergs, and maelstroms still invisible from the deck. He can be dragged down from the mast and put to tending the boilers or working the capstan, but that will not change anything: the mast will remain, and the next man on the masthead will see what the first has seen.
In a storm, you must have a man aloft. We are in the midst of storm today, and SOS signals come from every side.

Colum McCann photo

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Related topics