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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In later life, as in earlier, only a few persons influence the formation of our character; the multitude pass us by like a distant army.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Character
Joys are our wings; sorrows our spurs.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Joy, Excitement
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
Never does a man portray his own character more vividly, than in his manner of portraying another.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Character
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
Sorrows are like thunderclouds – in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
No joy in nature is so sublimely affecting as the joy of a mother at the good fortune of her child.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mother
Love lessens woman’s delicacy, and increases man’s.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Love
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
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life; the evil fog of gloom hovers in the distance; sorrow is more confusing and distracting than so-called giddiness.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Laughter
No man needs money so much as he who despises it.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Money
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Absence
Sleep, the antechamber of the grave.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sleep
Without God there is for mankind no purpose, no goal, no hope, only a wavering future, an eternal dread of every darkness.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Religion, God
The look of a king is itself a deed.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Power
Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Character
No author can be as moral as his work and no preacher as pious as his sermons.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Morals, Morality
Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love, that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; and pride, two bent knees.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Anger
More joyful eyes look at the setting, than at the rising sun.—Burdens are laid down by the poor, whom the sun consoles more than the rich.—I yearn toward him when he sets, not when he rises.
—Jean Paul
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Birthdays, Life
Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Aging, Age, Mystery
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
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: Party, Parties
The gymnasium of running, walking on stilts, climbing, etc., steels and makes hardy single powers and muscles, but dancing, like a corporeal poesy, embellishes, exercises, and equalizes all the muscles at once.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Exercise, Dancing
True, what you sacrifice for the world is but poorly recognized by it; for it is man that rules and reaps the harvest; the thousand night watches and sacrifices by which a mother secures the state a hero or a poet are forgotten, not even mentioned, for the mother herself does not mention them, and so one century after another do the wives, unknown and unrewarded send forth the arrows, the starts the storm-birds and the nightingales of time.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Truth
Strong character is brought out by change, weak ones by permanence.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Change, Miscellaneous
A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Maidenhood
Remembrances last longer than present realities; I have preserved blossoms for many years, but never fruits.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Remembrance
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.
—Jean Paul
Cheerfulness is the atmosphere under which all things thrive.
—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
Topics: Eternity
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Memory, Memories
There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Flattery
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Criticism
Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Death, Dying
Music is the poetry of the air.
—Jean Paul
Why does the evening, why does the night, put warmer love in our hearts?—Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness?—Or is it the exalting separation from the turmoils of life, that veiling of the world in which, for the soul, nothing remains but souls?
—Jean Paul
Topics: Night
The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Children
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