1763-1825, German Novelist
A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another s.
Jean Paul Richter – [Character]
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.
Jean Paul Richter – [Courage]
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 – [Love]
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 – [Age and Aging]
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
Jean Paul Richter – [Courage]
Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.
Jean Paul Richter – [Death and Dying]
Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
Jean Paul Richter – [Action]
Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.
Jean Paul Richter – [Friends and Friendship]
Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
Jean Paul Richter – [Adversity]
Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.
Jean Paul Richter – [Age and Aging]
Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
Jean Paul Richter – [Forgiveness]
I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.
Jean Paul Richter – [Success]
It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.
Jean Paul Richter – [Motivation]
Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.
Jean Paul Richter – [Happiness]
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 – [Age and Aging]
Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.
Jean Paul Richter – [Courtesy]
Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
Jean Paul Richter – [Writers and Writing]
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.
Jean Paul Richter – [Birthdays]
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
Jean Paul Richter – [Memory]
Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
Jean Paul Richter – [Sorrow]