Jean Paul Quotes

Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough.

Universal love is a glove without fingers, which fits all bands alike and none closely; but true affection is like a glove with fingers, which fits one hand only, and sits close to that one.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

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

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

To keep hope alive one must, in spite of all mistakes, horrors, and crimes, recognize the obvious superiority of the socialist camp.

I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.

You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

What I regretted in La Nausee was not to have put myself completely into the thing. I remained outside my hero's disease, protected by my neurosis which, through writing, gave me happiness.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

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

What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.

Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.

There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what?

We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.

When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.

When I can't see myself in the mirror, I can't even feel myself, and I begin to wonder if I exist at all.

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

The more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.

What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity.

Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.

Man must be invented each day

I distrust the incommunicable; it is the source of all violence

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Two people can form a community by excluding a third.

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.

Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time.

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

People are so codified - it's sad.

When people have good energy, I feel it. And generally I feel that people do like me. And that makes me very happy.

Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.

There are souls which fall from heaven like flowers, but ere they bloom are crushed under the foul tread of some brutal hoof.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.

Life gave me everything I asked If all I asked was not a great deal, that's my problem!

Clothes are expensive. You have to buy them, and to buy them, you have to believe in them.

Man has here two and a half minutes-one to smile, one to sigh, and a half to love: for in the midst of this minute he dies.