Jean Paul

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (21 March 1763 – 14 November 1825) was a German novelist and short-story writer. He is usually referred to by his pen-name, Jean Paul, but sometimes simply as Richter.

Quotes



 * Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
 * Titan (1800-3)


 * When Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction; unlike ordinary educators, who precisely reverse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands before us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, but not enter.
 * Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education (1807; 1865 translation) p. 1


 * Die Erinnerung ist das einzige Paradies, aus welchem wir nicht getrieben werden können.
 * Memory is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.
 * Jean Paul's Geist; oder Chrestomathie, Vierter Theil [4th part], Weimar/Leipzig, (1816)


 * The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.
 * As quoted in Treasury of Thought (1872) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 521


 * A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
 * Quoted as "Richter", in Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884), p. 161


 * The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.
 * Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 366

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

 * Quotes reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert.


 * No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.
 * p. 19


 * The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.
 * p. 59


 * The last, best fruit that comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard; forbearance toward the unforbearing; warmth of heart toward the cold; and philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
 * p. 105


 * When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.
 * p. 238


 * The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.
 * p. 313.


 * The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.
 * p. 366


 * The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment.
 * p. 368


 * The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.
 * p. 416


 * Has it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the cages of birds when we wish to teach them to sing?
 * p. 556


 * Suffering is my gain; I bow To my Heavenly Father's will, And receive it hushed and still; Suffering is my worship now.
 * p. 568


 * How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world!
 * p. 597


 * Lift thyself up, look. around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness.
 * p. 620