Jean Paul Quotes

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys but that our hopes cease.

How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world!

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 cages of birds when we wish to teach them to sing?

Die Erinnerung ist das einzige Paradies, aus welchem wir nicht getrieben werden können.

Rough and dark is often the veil of the soul, while within, so pure and transparent. Like the grey crust upon ice, that, when severed, reveals within a pure blue light, like the transparent ether. Thus remain veiled to the stranger, but be not concealed from thyself.

"the flute is the true magical rod that changes all it touches in the inward world; an enchanter's wand at which the secret depths of the soul open. The inward world is the true world," said Vult; "the moonlight that shines into our hearts."

How alone everyone is in the vast tomb of the universe!

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.

Everyone receives his inner sense
of North and South at birth.
Whether an external polarity comes with it
is not terribly important.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.

Bücher lesen heißt wandern gehen in ferne Welten, aus den Stuben über die Sterne

Die deutsche Sprache ist die Orgel unter den Sprachen.

The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.

Sobald wir anfangen zu leben, drückt oben das Schicksal den Pfeil des Todes aus der Ewigkeit ab - er fliegt so lange, als wir atmen, und wenn er ankommt, hören wir auf.