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 parent is low, who having children, truly feels bored.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Parenting, Parents
Time is the chrysalis of eternity.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Time
Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Heart
The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Death, Nature
Fancy rules over two thirds of the universe, the past and future, while reality is confined to the present.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Reality
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
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
—Jean Paul
Lift up thyself, look around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earth worms, and earthly darkness.
—Jean Paul
Joys are our wings; sorrows our spurs.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Joy, Excitement
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
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
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Poverty
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
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Memories, Memory
Every man regards his own life as the New Year’s Eve of time.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Perspective
Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thine abode.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
Humankind’s chief fault is that they have so many small ones.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mistakes, Faults
Men’s feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell; like the glaciers, which are transparent and rosy-hued only at sunrise and sunset, but throughout the day are gray and cold.
—Jean Paul
No author can be as moral as his work and no preacher as pious as his sermons.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Morality, Morals
Brevity is the body and soul of wit.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Humor, Wit
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
O, banish the tears of children! Continual rains upon the blossoms are hurtful.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Tears
Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
Music is the only one of the fine arts in which not only man, but all other animals, have a common property,—mice and elephants, spiders and birds.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Music
Never does a man portray his own character more vividly, than in his manner of portraying another.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Character
A small sorrow distracts; a great one makes us collected.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
Passion makes the best observations and the sorriest conclusions.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Passion
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 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
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
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