Jean Paul Richter Quotes
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.
A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's
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.
Too much trust is a foolishness, too much distrust a tragedy.
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.
Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent.
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.
The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.
Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
It is not the end of joy that makes old age so sad, but the end of hope.
Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
You prove your worth with your actions, not with your mouth.
The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment.
Sorrows are like thunderclouds - in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
Paradise is always where love dwells.
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?
Lift thyself up, look. around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness.
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.
Cheerfulness is the atmosphere in which all things thrive.
Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Only actions give life its strength, as only moderation gives it its charm.
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.
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.
