Jean Paul Quotes

Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

We are our choices.

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.

I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.

Man has the right to deal with his oppressors by devouring their palpitating hearts.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness.

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

We do not judge the people we love.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

The guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.

your judgement judges you and defines you

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

Paradise is always where love dwells.

In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.

I would like to say to people, open your eyes and find beauty where you normally don't expect it.

Hell is other people at breakfast.

Man is what he wills himself to be.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

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

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

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

It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.

Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.

If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

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

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

Being afraid is the worst sin there is.