Top 40 Jan-Philipp Sendker Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Loneliness is the most severe punishment. We are not built to handle it. I.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

2. “What do violent individuals fear most? Violence? I should say not! By what do the cruel and selfish feel most threatened? All of them fear nothing as much as they fear love.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

3. “I will tell you: It’s love. Love makes us beautiful. Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There’s no need to ponder the question. There is no such person.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

4. “Every step we take leaves a trace.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

5. “Death is not the end of life, but a stage thereof.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

6. “I speak of a love that brings sight to the blind. Of a love stronger than fear. I speak of a love that breathes meaning into life, that defies the natural laws of deterioration, that causes us to flourish, that knows no bounds. I speak of the triumph of the human spirit over selfishness and death.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

7. “I have often wondered what was the source of her beauty, her radiance. It’s not the size of one’s nose, the color of one’s skin, the shape of one’s lips or eyes that make one beautiful or ugly. So what is it? Can you, as a woman, tell me? ” I shook my head. “I will tell you: It’s love. Love makes us beautiful. Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There’s no need to ponder the question. There is no such person.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

8. “We are responsible not only for what we do, but also for what we fail to do.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

9. “There is nothing, for good or for evil, of which a person is incapable.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

10. “And so there must be in life something like a catastrophic turning point, when the world as we know ceases to exist. A moment that transform us into a different person from one heartbeat to the next.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

11. “According to her we are each our own greatest mystery, and our life’s work is to solve ourselves. None of us ever succeeds, she says, but it is our duty to follow the trail. Regardless of how long it is or where it might.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

12. “The fear of death is presumably a survival instinct, Tin Win later thought. It must be an essential part of us, of every living creature. At the same time, we must transcend it to take our leave in peace. He found this an irresolvable contradiction.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

13. “Fear blinds and deafens. Rage blinds and deafens. So, too, envy and suspicion. There was only one force stronger than fear.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

14. “By how many people must we be loved in order to be happy? Two? Five? Ten? Or maybe only one? The one who gives us sight. Who takes away fear. Who breathes meaning into our existence. There.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

15. “Only once had she asked the question: Why? And she had known that there would never be an answer. Her feet were a whim of nature. It would have been silly to look for causes or to rebel. She would not bicker with fate. Still, it hurt.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

16. “Sometimes we must search afar to find what’s close at hand.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

17. “She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

18. “To forgive, one must love and be loved. Only those who forgive can be free. Whoever forgives is a prisoner no more.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

19. “Images can fade. Sounds and smells disappear from our memory. But our heart forgets nothing. A child’s soul knows everything.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

20. “He expected nothing more from life. Not because he was disappointed or embittered. He expected nothing because there was nothing of importance that he had not already experienced. He possessed all the happiness that a person could find. He loved and was loved. Unconditionally.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

21. “Eyes and ears are not the problem... It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

22. “Nothing in this world had a fixed place. Everything was in motion.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

23. “The true essence of things is invisible to the eyes.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

24. “Not all truths are explicable. Not all explicable things are true.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

25. “She was mystified by people who were always hurrying things along. A time of waiting offered moments, minutes, sometimes even hours of peace, of rest, during which, as a rule, she was alone with herself.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

26. “Is it true that we can count the moments in which something really happens in our lives? Do we notice it right away, or only in hindsight?”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

27. “What’s more, they had taught him to be friendly and helpful to others. Not because he owed it to them. Because he owed it to himself.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

28. “It’s true I lost my eyesight many years ago. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

29. “In the hell of the well-intentioned.” That was how he referred to the charity balls my mother helped organize.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

30. “She had never witnessed such a symbiosis between two people, and there were moments when the sight of them made her wonder whether, in the end, a person maybe wasn’t alone after all, whether in some cases, the smallest human unit was two rather than one.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

31. “How can a person be moved to tears by something she can neither see, understand, nor hold on to, a mere sound that vanishes almost the moment it comes into being?”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

32. “I told him I had no use for introspection and navel-gazing. I was probably one of the few New Yorkers who had never been to a therapist. I was not the type to go looking for the causes of all my problems in my childhood, and I had no respect for those who did.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

33. “Every life contains the seed of death,” he had explained to Tin Win repeatedly in those first years of their friendship. Death, like birth, was a part of life that no one could escape. It was senseless to resist it. Far better to accept it as natural than to fear it.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

34. “We believe that we see the world around us, and yet it is only the surface that we perceive.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

35. “When we get over something, we move on, we put it behind us. Do we leave the dead behind or do we take them with us? I think we take them with us. They accompany us. They remain with us, if in another form. We have to learn to live with them and their deaths.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

36. “Hearts sounded different from person to person, betraying age or youth, joy, sorrow, fear, or courage, but that was all.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

37. “We often discover only many years later whether life and the stars were smiling upon us or not. Life can take the most surprising turns. What.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

38. “We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

39. “She saw that he knew what loneliness was, that he understood why it might be raining inside a person even when the sun shone, that sadness needed no immediate cause.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

40. “My bees cannot sting.” “You mean they haven’t stung anyone yet.” “Is there a difference?” “What do you do with the honey?” “What honey?” “From the bees.” U Ba looked at me. “I wouldn’t touch it. It belongs to the bees.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

41. “We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

42. “In essence, however, his principal aim was to pass on the lesson life had taught him: that a person’s greatest treasure is the wisdom in his own heart.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

43. “Why do we so often put off the things that matter most to us?”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

44. “The world was full of signs. One needed only to know how to see and interpret them.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker

45. “There are moments that we simply cannot endure. They transform us into someone else.”

— Jan-Philipp Sendker