Skip to content

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

Das Alter ist nicht trübe weil darin unsere Freuden, sondern weil unsere Hoffnungen aufhören.

Original text (German)

Another quote →

Topics

Age

More quotes by Jean Paul

The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.

Treasury of Thought (1872)

All Jean Paul quotes →

You may also like

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jean Paul (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.