In fashionable circles, satire which attacks the fault, rather than the person, is unwelcome; while that which attacks the person and spares the fault is always acceptable.
—Jean Paul
Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Aging, Age
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: Mystery, Age, Aging
Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow
Good deeds ring clear through heaven like a bell.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Deeds
The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Nature, Death
Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly.—Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God’s blessing, but constant in looking to him.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Heart
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
Despair is the only genuine atheism.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Despair
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 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
Is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Divinity, God, Faith
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Heroes, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism
Our sorrows are like thunder-clouds, which seem black in the distance, but grow lighter as they approach.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Sorrow
Life, like the waters of the seas, freshens only when it ascends toward heaven.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Life
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
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
—Jean Paul
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
Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Politeness, Courtesy, Manners
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
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
The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Miracles
The sublime is the temple-step of religion, as the stars are of immeasurable space. When what is mighty appears in nature,—a storm, thunder, the starry firmament, death,—then utter the word “God” before the child. A great misfortune, a great blessing, a great crime, a noble action are building sites for a child’s church.
—Jean Paul
Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Death, Dying
Let a woman once give you a task, and you are hers, heart and soul; all your care and trouble lend new charms to her, for whose sake they were taken. To rescue, to revenge, to instruct or protect a woman is all the same as to love her.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Woman
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
A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Maidenhood
Love lessens woman’s delicacy, and increases man’s.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Love
Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
—Jean Paul
Topics: Mother
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 Physicist
- Ludwig van Beethoven German Composer
- Anne Frank German Holocaust Victim
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