Jean Paul Richter

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.

— Jean Paul Richter

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

— Jean Paul Richter

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.

— Jean Paul Richter

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another s.

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.

— Jean Paul Richter

Woman and men of retiring timidity are cowardly only in dangers which affect themselves, but the first to rescue when others are in danger.

— Jean Paul Richter

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.

— Jean Paul Richter

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.

— Jean Paul Richter

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.

— Jean Paul Richter

The miracle on earth are the laws of heaven.

— Jean Paul Richter

It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.

— Jean Paul Richter

True, what you sacrifice for the world is but poorly recognized by it; for it is man that rules and reaps the harvest; the thousand night watches and sacrifices by which a mother secures the state a hero or a poet are forgotten, not even mentioned, for the mother herself does not mention them, and so one century after another do the wives, unknown and unrewarded send forth the arrows, the starts the storm-birds and the nightingales of time.

— Jean Paul Richter

Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.

— Jean Paul Richter

Weaklings must lie.

— Jean Paul Richter

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

— Jean Paul Richter