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
book heart empty
I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.
reality existentialism action
Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action. (There is no reality except in action.)
reflection consciousness pale
A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.
thinking crowds revolution
But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.
thinking sick people
It's just what people do when they're getting old, when they're sick of themselves and their life; they think of money and take care of themselves.
air space shining
She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.
use alive unbearable
Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.
men plight modern
The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.
becoming ends contingency
He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.
singing suffering sorrow
She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.
existentialism human-nature there-is-no-god
There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.
mistake heart reason
Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.
body disgusting
It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?
violence nothing-to-lose loses
Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.