The Society of the Crossed Keys

But I can’t put the chances of any real opposition to the idea of war higher than zero. It takes far more courage for a man to oppose an organisation than to go along with the crowd. Standing up to it calls for individualism, and individualists are a dying species in these times of progressive organisation and mechanisation.

If you are experiencing nothing yourself, the passionate restlessness of others stimulates the nervous system like music or drama.

Forbidden fruit excites a craving, only what is forbidden stimulates desire, and the less the eyes saw and the ears heard the more minds dreamt.

We who have been hunted through the rapids of life, torn from our former roots, always driven to the end and obliged to begin again, victims and yet also the willing servants of unknown mysterious powers, we for whom comfort has become an old legend and security, a childish dream, have felt tension from pole to pole of our being, the terror of something always new in every fibre. Every hour of our years was linked to the fate of the world.

But I can’t put the chances of any real opposition to the idea of war higher than zero. It takes far more courage for a man to oppose an organisation than to go along with the crowd. Standing up to it calls for individualism, and individualists are a dying species in these times of progressive organisation and mechanisation. In the war the instances of courage that I met could be called courage en masse, courage within the ranks, and if you look closely at that phenomenon you’ll find some very strange elements in it—a good deal of vanity, thoughtlessness, even boredom, but mainly fear—fear of lagging behind, fear of mockery, fear of taking independent action, and most of all fear of opposing the united opinion of your companions.

He remained open in every sense, hampered by no inhibitions, confused by no vanity, a free and happy man, easily giving vent to every enthusiasm. When you were with him, you felt inspired in your own will to live.

With the first thing he said, he reached into you because he was perfectly open, accessible to every newcomer, rejecting nothing, ready for everyone. He sent his whole being, you might say, out to meet you again and again

But society is always most cruel to those who betray its secrets, showing where its dishonesty commits a crime against nature.

The herd instinct of the mob was not yet as offensively powerful in public life as it is today; freedom in what you did or did not do in private life was something taken for granted—which is hardly imaginable now—and toleration was not, as it is today, deplored as weakness and debility, but was praised as an ethical force.

It was only in art that all the Viennese felt they had equal rights, because art, like love, was regarded as a duty incumbent on everyone in the city