Jean Paul

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

“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.”

“Age does not matter if the matter does not age.”

“Live your life and forget your age.”

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

“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.”

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”

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

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

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

“Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.”

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

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

“For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.”

“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.”

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

“Only actions give life strength only moderation gives it charm.”