Jean Paul
Jean Paul
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth21 March 1763
CountryGermany
sleep waiting needs
So it comes to this; one doesn’t need rest. Why bother about sleep if one isn’t sleepy? That stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wait a minute, there’s a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable? …Ah, I see; it’s life without a break.
tease used ifs
You see, I'm fond of teasing, it's a second nature with me—and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely.
distance heart nausea
Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.
thinking glasses hands
He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.
mistake people together
Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.
firsts principles emotion
emotion is first of all and in principle an accident
madness absurd relation
A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.
life blood shedding-blood
It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.
filled-up existentialism plunge
Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.
existentialism nothingness
Nothingness haunts Being.
running men running-away
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.
children chocolate pieces
It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.
reflection glasses heaven
Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed...I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.
want said dies
I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.