Jean Paul (1763–1825,) born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories. Jean Paul was born at Wunsiedel, in the Fichtelgebirge mountains. His father was an organist at Wunsiedel. In 1765 his father became a pastor at Joditz near Hof and, in 1767 at Schwarzenbach, but he died on 25 April 1779, leaving the family in great poverty. After attending the Gymnasium at Hof, in 1781 Jean Paul went to the University of Leipzig. His original intention was to enter his father’s profession, but theology did not interest him, and he soon devoted himself wholly to the study of literature. Unable to maintain himself at Leipzig he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Töpen, a village near Hof; and from 1790 to 1794 he taught the children of several families in a school he had founded in nearby Schwarzenbach.
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The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brilliant, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion?
—Jean Paul
Topics: Night
There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
When those we have loved have long vanished from the earth, then will the beloved voice come back and bring with it all our old tears and the disconsolate heart that sheds them.
—Jean Paul
He who is truly religious finds a providence not more truly in the history of the world, than in his own personal and family history.—The rainbow which hangs a splendid circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by the same sun in the dew-drop of the lowly flower.
—Jean Paul
The tear of joy is a pearl of the first water; the mourning tear, only of the second.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Tears
Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Age, Aging
A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s.
—Jean Paul
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life, Birthdays
The guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Angels
Oh, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein!
—Jean Paul
Topics: Woman
The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Nature, Death
Stately spring! whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Spring
Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mother
I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition, than in air rarified to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
—Jean Paul
The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Example, Advice, Children
If there were no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.
—Jean Paul
Sleep, riches, health, and so every blessing, are not truly and fully enjoyed till after they have been interrupted.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Enjoyment
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
—Jean Paul
Idleness is many gathered miseries in one name.
—Jean Paul
Topics: One liners, Idleness, Laziness
Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow
To love all mankind a cheerful state of being is required; but to see into mankind, into life, and still more into ourselves, suffering is requisite.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Suffering
Lift up thyself, look around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earth worms, and earthly darkness.
—Jean Paul
Music is the poetry of the air.
—Jean Paul
We take contradiction more easily than is supposed, if not violently given, even though it is well founded.—Hearts are like flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.
—Jean Paul
According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected.—I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Truth
Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Individuality
The sorrows of a noble soul are as May frosts, which precede the milder seasons; but the sorrows of a hardened, lost soul, are as the autumn frosts, which foretell but the coming of winter.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the foot of the cradle.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Children, Destiny
Life, like the waters of the seas, freshens only when it ascends toward heaven.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
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.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Feelings, Principles
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