Jean Paul Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

Jean Paul
Passion makes the best observations and draws the most wretched conclusions. It is a telescope whose field is so much the brighter as it is narrower.

Jean Paul
God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.

Jean Paul
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world; but it will be heard by posterity.

Jean Paul
The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.

Jean Paul
A man takes contradiction and advice much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well-founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.

Jean Paul
The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.

Jean Paul
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.

Jean Paul
In science the new is an advance; but in morals, as contradicting our inner ideals and historic idols, it is ever a retrogression.

Jean Paul
How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world!

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

Jean Paul
The heart needs not for its heaven much space, nor many stars therein, if only the star of love has arisen.

Jean Paul
Emanuel looked peacefully as an eternal sundown upon the autumn of his body; indeed the more sand had fallen out of his life-hourglass, the clearer he saw through the empty glass.

Jean Paul
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

Jean Paul
I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.

Jean Paul
Lift thyself up, look. around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness.

Jean Paul
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.

Jean Paul
The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of woman is sooner lost than that of man.

Jean Paul
Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it.

Jean Paul
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.

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

Jean Paul
No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.

Jean Paul
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 cages of birds when we wish to teach them to sing?

Jean Paul
The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.

Jean Paul
No joy in nature is so sublimely affecting as the joy of a mother at the good fortune of a child.

Jean Paul
When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.

Jean Paul
The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.

Jean Paul
The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindest soul, is, tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthrope.

Jean Paul
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Jean Paul
Memory is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.

Jean Paul