Jean Paul Quotes

Memory is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.

Sprecht nicht: wir wollen leiden; denn ihr müßt. Sprecht aber: wir wollen handeln; denn ihr müßt nicht.

On the church vaulting above was the clock-face of eternity, void of number and serving as its own hand, only one black finger was pointing and the dead wanted to tell the time by it.

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.

The best moments of a visit are those which again and again postpone its close.

When Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction; unlike ordinary educators, who precisely reverse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands before us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, but not enter.

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?

The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.

...when any one explains himself guardedly, nothing is more uncivil than to put a new question.

Kein Autor erdreistet sich, allen Lesern zu schreiben; gleichwohl erkeckt sich jeder Leser, alle Autoren zu lesen.

Дайте ни най-добрите майки, и ние ще станем най-добрите хора.

Wer nicht zuweilen zu viel empfindet, der empfindet immer zu wenig.

Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.

A man never reveals his character more vividly than when portraying the character of another.