Explore Quotes by Jean Paul

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.

Weaklings must lie.

Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.

Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.

Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.

What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.

Paradise is always where love dwells.

What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

It is easy to flatter; it is harder to praise.

Jesus is the purest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the pure, who, with his pierced hand has raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages

For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed and gratefully appreciated, they must be interrupted so the person can see that not having them is not as good as having them.

Has it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the eyes of birds when we wish them to sing?

With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?

A scholar knows no boredom.

If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.

Universal love is a glove without fingers, which fits all bands alike and none closely; but true affection is like a glove with fingers, which fits one hand only, and sits close to that one.

It has been jestingly said that the works of John Paul Richter are almost unintelligible to any but the Germans, and even to some of them. A worthy German, just before Richter's death, edited a complete edition of his works, in which one particular passage fairly puzzled him. Determined to have it explained at the source, he went to John Paul himself. The author's reply was very characteristic: "My good friend, when I wrote that passage, God and I knew what it meant; it is possible that God knows it still; but as for me, I have totally forgotten."

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.

Two aged men, that had been foes for life, Met by a grave, and wept - and in those tears They washed away the memory of their strife; Then wept again the loss of all those years.

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.