Life & Wisdom Quote by Karl Kraus

Jealousy, in Kraus's hands, isn’t a tragic proof of love; it’s a noisy self-own. The line works because it yanks jealousy out of the romantic register and drops it into the street: a dog barking in the dark, announcing not danger but vulnerability. The supposed guard becomes an alarm system for criminals. You can hear Kraus smirking at the bourgeois instinct to treat possessiveness as vigilance. He flips the moral: the jealous person thinks they’re protecting what’s “theirs,” but the spectacle of suspicion signals exactly where the soft spots are.

The subtext is social, not just psychological. Jealousy is performative surveillance: it publicizes insecurity, turns intimacy into a patrol, and creates the very intrigue it fears. Thieves here aren’t only literal interlopers; they’re opportunists of any kind - rivals, gossips, manipulators - drawn to the drama and the opening it creates. A relationship made loud with accusations becomes easier to invade, because distrust has already cracked the door.

Kraus, a Viennese satirist who specialized in puncturing the hypocrisies of his era’s press, politics, and polite society, is also taking a swing at moral vanity. Jealousy pretends to be principled (“I demand loyalty”), but it’s often just appetite wearing a badge. Like a barking dog that can’t bite, it substitutes noise for strength - and in doing so, advertises the house.