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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No man needs money so much as he who despises it.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Money
The last, best fruit that comes late to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, and philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Charity, Kindness, Feelings
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
Sleep, riches, health, and so every blessing, are not truly and fully enjoyed till after they have been interrupted.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Enjoyment
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, Mystery, Age
We learn our virtues from the bosom friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
—Jean Paul
No author can be as moral as his work and no preacher as pious as his sermons.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Morals, Morality
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?
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
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
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
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
Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mother
The Turks carefully collect every scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may be written thereon.
—Jean Paul
Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Individuality
Fancy rules over two thirds of the universe, the past and future, while reality is confined to the present.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Reality
Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Humanity, Forgiveness
The child is not to be educated for the present, but for the remote future, and often is opposition to the immediate future.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Future, The Future
Good deeds ring clear through heaven like a bell.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Deeds
The parent is low, who having children, truly feels bored.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Parenting, Parents
Humankind’s chief fault is that they have so many small ones.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Faults, Mistakes
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroes, Heroism
O, banish the tears of children! Continual rains upon the blossoms are hurtful.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Tears
Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.
—Jean Paul
Is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Divinity, Faith, God
Music is the poetry of the air.
—Jean Paul
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the foot of the cradle.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Destiny, Children
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 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
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
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Bravery, Courage
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
Brevity is the body and soul of wit.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Wit, Humor
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
Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Adversity, Problems, Weather
Despair is the only genuine atheism.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Despair
The very afflictions of our earthly pilgrimage are presages of our future glory, as shadows indicate the sun.
—Jean Paul
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
—Jean Paul
Life, like the waters of the seas, freshens only when it ascends toward heaven.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thine abode.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
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