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
regret responsibility tears
I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
hate men odd
it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.
damage harm oneself
One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.
memories cutting men
Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, solidly entrenched in his well-being, who one fine day surrenders all to love—or to hatred; himself, his house, his land, his memories.
sleep eye flesh
My eyes feel all soft, all soft as flesh. I'm going to sleep.
dark sea littles
Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.
believe order giving
I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.
passion useless life-is
Life is a useless passion.
people feelings world
I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.
book writing psychology
Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.
fall night light
The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word.
memories past trying
I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.
morning fifteen next
A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.
nice heart nests
I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.