Jean Paul Quotes

The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.

Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait.

Without God there is for mankind no purpose, no goal, no hope, only a wavering future, an eternal dread of every darkness.

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

Nothing is more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face.

Sleep, riches, and health, to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted.

Atheism is a cruel long term business, and I have gone through it to the end.

Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.

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.

I can not forget Melina Mercouri in black dress at 'Never on Sunday'.

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.

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

Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.

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

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

A scholar knows no boredom.

Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent.

Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life.

I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

Dressing is a pleasure; clothes are not a joke.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

Sometimes I have chosen to see films just by their posters.

Romanticism is beauty without bounds-the beautiful infinite.

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

This desire [to write] is rather strange all the same and is not without a certain "cracked" quality.

It is easy to flatter; it is harder to praise.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Introspection is always retrospection

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

You see me, I wanted to be fashion designer. I became fashion designer. So I think that everything is possible.

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.

Some of these days, Oh, you'll miss me honey

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.

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

It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.

Humankind's chief fault is that they have so many small ones.

Photographs are not ideas. They give us ideas.