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
spirituality behinds
Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.
love true-love one-love
Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone.
peace war hatred
...Uncalled-for aggression arouses the hatred of the civilian population...
children father men
Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity!
men essence human-nature
Man's existence precedes his essence
life eye hands
We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.
hero coward heroic
The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.
eye body way
I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.
play enough priests
I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.
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.