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.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Jean Paul
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroism, Heroes
Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thine abode.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a section; and enjoy and improve the present without wishing, through haste, to rush on to another.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Present
Despair is the only genuine atheism.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Despair
The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Death, Nature
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: Principles, Feelings
There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all those incorporeal spirits, and the perfume of all these flowers.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Poetry
Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
With the people of courts the tongue is the artery of their withered life, the spiral spring and flag-feather of their souls.
—Jean Paul
Everything holy is before what is unholy; guilt presupposes innocence, not the reverse.—Angels, but not fallen ones, were created.—Man does not properly rise to the highest, but first sinks down from it, and then afterward rises again.
—Jean Paul
No rest is worth anything except the rest that is earned.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Leisure, Rest, One liners
The apparently irreconcilable dissimilarity between our wishes and our means, between our hearts and this world, remains a riddle.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Wishes
Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Parties, Party
The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Miracles
Sorrows are like thunderclouds – in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the foot of the cradle.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Destiny, Children
Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mother
Love lessens woman’s delicacy, and increases man’s.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Love
The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Family, Influence, Leadership, Children
Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Character
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
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Memories, Memory
Fancy rules over two thirds of the universe, the past and future, while reality is confined to the present.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Reality
Women and men of retiring timidity are cowardly only in dangers which affect themselves, but are the first to rescue when others are endangered.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Courage, Bravery
The most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, namely our impatience, and the delusion that it will last forever.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Pain
Love one human being purely and warmly, and you will love all.—The heart in this heaven, like the sun in its course, sees nothing, from the dewdrop to the ocean, but a mirror which it brightens, and warms, and fills.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Love
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life, Birthdays
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Poverty
The end we aim at must be known, before the way can be made.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Planning
Is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.
—Jean Paul
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Thomas Mann German Novelist
Berthold Auerbach German Novelist
Hans Carossa German Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German Poet
Nikos Kazantzakis Greek Novelist, Statesman
Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi German Philosopher
Werner Heisenberg German Theoretical Physicist
Ludwig van Beethoven German Composer
Anne Frank German Holocaust Victim