Quotes from Jean Paul Richter

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

Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell.

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

There is a certain noble pride, through which merits shine brighter than through modesty.

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

No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.

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

Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.

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

Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.

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.

It is not the end of joy that makes old age so sad, but the end of hope.

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.

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.