Quotes By Jean Paul

Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.

Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.

Woman and men of retiring timidity are cowardly only in dangers which affect themselves, but the first to rescue when others are in danger.

God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.

Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.

Age does not matter if the matter does not age.

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold and silver, it attracts with tenfold power.

There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.

The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.

What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.

Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Weaklings must lie.

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.

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

Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.