Jean Paul quotes
Jean Paul (1763–1825): German Romantic writer (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter). The library holds 291 quotes by Jean Paul, drawn from In his days of poverty. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, faith, time, love, nature, happiness
The best-known Jean Paul quotes
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Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another.
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To love all mankind, from the greatest to the lowest, a cheerful state of being is required; but in order to see into mankind, into life, and still more into ourselves, suffering is requisite.
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Ripening love is the stillest; the shady flowers in this spring, as in the other, shun sunlight.
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Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all mothers venerable.
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The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun.
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Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest to bear; but they are so because they are the very ones he needs.
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Tears of joy are the dew in which the sun of righteousness is mirrored.
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Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected, as the root of everything good.
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The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow’s veil, the future the virgin’s.
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How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill! It is only the thought of the future that makes them great.
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Never write on a subject without having first read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.
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Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in supporting it.
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The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is quiet.
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Sorrows are like thunder-clouds—in the distance they look black, over our heads hardly gray.
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Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of somethings.
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No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.
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The more weakness, the more falsehood; strength goes straight; every cannon-ball that has in it hollows and holes goes crooked. Weaklings must lie.
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Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly. Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God’s blessing, but constant in looking to Him.
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Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.
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Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.
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God is the light which, never seen itself, makes all things visible, and clothes itself in colours. Thine eye feels not its ray, but thine heart feels its warmth.
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Love lessens the woman’s refinement and strengthens the man’s.
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Great happiness is the fire ordeal of mankind, great misfortune only the trial by water; for the former opens a large extent of futurity, whereas the latter circumscribes or closes it.
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Play, that is, activity, not pleasures, will keep children cheerful.
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The animal is capable of enjoyment, only man is capable of serenity of mind and gladness of heart.
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Nature has directly formed woman to be a mother, only indirectly to be a wife; man, on the contrary, is rather made to be a husband than a father.
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Life, like the water of the seas, freshens only when it ascends towards heaven.
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No school is more necessary to children than patience, because either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age.
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Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; whereas other excellences, which lie deep like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud.
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A circumnavigator of the globe is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.
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Good women grudge each other nothing, save only clothes, husbands, and flax.
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Whoever can turn his weeping eyes to heaven has lost nothing, for there above is everything he can wish for here below. He only is a loser who persists in looking down on the narrow plains of the present time.
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To elevate above the spirit of the age must be regarded as the end of education.
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Truth, like the Venus de Medici, will pass down in thirty fragments to posterity; but posterity will collect and recompose them into a goddess.
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Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world, and the old man lives among graves.
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In the childhood of nations speaking was singing; let this be repeated in the childhood of the individual.
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Let the ideal in art, the representation of majesty in repose, be the ideal on the throne.
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The tear of joy is a pearl of the first water; the mourning tear, only of the second.
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Poverty is but as the pain of piercing the ears of a maiden, and you hang jewels in the wound.
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He, the Holiest among the mighty, and the Mightiest among the holy, has lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.
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Feelings come and go like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.
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Man has two and a half minutes here below—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
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O the wound of conscience is no scar, and Time cools it not with his wing, but merely keeps it open with his scythe.
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Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, clear-seeing nature, loses herself, and what she has of heart and happiness, in the object she loves.
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Among nations the head has alway preceded the heart by centuries.
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The rose does not bloom without thorns. True, but would that the thorns did not outlive the rose.
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Peevishness covers with its dark fog even the most distant horizon.
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Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear.
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Men and cucumbers are worth nothing as soon as they are ripe.
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To die for truth is not to die for one’s country but to die for the world.
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So easily are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.
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I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
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The prisoner’s allowance is bread and water, but I had only the latter.
In his days of poverty -
Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm.
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There is truly nothing purer and warmer than our first friendship, our first love.
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Reason teaches us to be silent; the heart teaches us to speak.
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Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then with satiety.
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Our heavenward progress is something like that of the Jerusalem pilgrims of old, who for three steps forward took one backward.
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Place moral heroes in the field, and heroines will follow them as brides.
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Cheerfulness opens, like spring, all the blossoms of the inward man.