RICHTER, Jean Paul (1763-1826), German humorist
Action
Only actions give to life its strength, as only moderation gives it its charm.
Affliction
The very afflictions of our earthly pilgrimage are presages of our future glory, as shadows indicate the sun.
Age
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.
Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.
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.
Angels
The guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.
Authorship
Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.
Beauty
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 faces 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.
Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold or silver, it attracts with ten-fold power.
Benevolence
Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good actions: try to use ordinary situations.
Care
Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time; the former grow upon it.
Character
Never does a man portray his own character more vividly, than in his manner of portraying another.
Charity
The last, best fruit that comes late to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, and philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
Children
The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun.
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the foot of the cradle.
Contradiction
We take contradiction more easily than is supposed, if not violently given, even though it is well founded.—Hearts are like flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.
Courage
Courage consists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it.
Women and men of retiring timidity are cowardly only in dangers which affect themselves, but are the first to rescue when others are endangered.
Courts and Courtiers
With the people of courts the tongue is the artery of their withered life, the spiral spring and flag-feather of their souls.
Courtship
Let a woman once give you a task and you are hers, heart and soul; all your care and trouble lend new charms to her for whose sake they are taken.—To rescue, to revenge, to instruct, or to protect a woman, is all the same as to love her.
Criticism
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
Dancing
The gymnasium of running, walking on stilts, climbing, etc., steels and makes hardy single powers and muscles, but dancing, like a corporeal poesy, embellishes, exercises, and equalizes all the muscles at once.
Danger
A timid person is frightened before a danger; a coward during the time; and a courageous person afterward.
Death
The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.
Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world.
Deeds
Good deeds ring clear through heaven like a bell.
Destiny
The clew of our destiny, wander where we will, lies at the cradle foot.
Dress
The only medicine which does women more good than harm, is dress.
Emotion
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
Emulation
There is a long and wearisome step between admiration and imitation.
Enjoyment
Sleep, riches, health, and so every blessing, are not truly and fully enjoyed till after they have been interrupted.
Eternity
The wish falls often, warm upon my heart, that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.
Example
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.
Excelsior
Lift up thyself, look around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earth worms, and earthly darkness.
Face
In the faces of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, there remains an after-spring, and later, an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.
Fancy
Fancy rules over two thirds of the universe, the past and future, while reality is confined to the present.
Feelings
The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is, tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
Feelings come and go, like light troops following the victory of the present; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed and stand fast.
Flattery
Men find it more easy to flatter than to praise.
Forgiveness
Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
When thou forgivest, the man who has pierced thy heart stands to thee in the relation of the sea-worm, that perforates the shell of the mussel, which straightway closes the wound with a pearl.
Friendship
We learn our virtues from the 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.
Future State
If there were no future life, our souls would not thirst for it.
Futurity
How narrow our souls become when absorbed in any present good or ill!—It is only the thought of the future that makes them great.
Heart
Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can.
Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly.—Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God's blessing, but constant in looking to him.
Heroism
The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.
Holiness
Everything holy is before what is unholy; guilt presupposes innocence, not the reverse.—Angels, but not fallen ones, were created.—Man does not properly rise to the highest, but first sinks down from it, and then afterward rises again.
Idleness
Idleness is many gathered miseries in one name.
Individuality
Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.
Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as the root of everything good.
Infidelity
I would rather dwell in the dim log of superstition than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief, in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
Influence
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.
Intolerance
The intolerant man is the real pedant.
Joy
Joys are our wings; sorrows our spurs.
Kindness
The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
Laughter
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life; the evil fog of gloom hovers in the distance; sorrow is more confusing and distracting than so-called giddiness.
No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.
Life
Life, like the waters of the seas, freshens only when it ascends toward heaven.
Many think themselves to be truly God-fearing when they call this world a valley of tears. But I believe they would be more so, if they called it a happy valley. God is more pleased with those who think everything right in the world, than with those who think nothing right. With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?
Love
Love one human being purely and warmly, and you will love all.—The heart in this heaven, like the sun in its course, sees nothing, from the dewdrop to the ocean, but a mirror which it brightens, and warms, and fills.
Love lessens woman's delicacy, and increases man's.
Maidenhood
A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold.
Memory
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
Misery
Misery so little appertains to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us.
Misfortune
Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower.
Moderation
Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it a charm.
Money
No man needs money so much as he who despises it.
Mother
Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
No joy in nature is so sublimely affecting as the joy of a mother at the good fortune of her child.
Music
Music is the only one of the fine arts in which not only man, but all other animals, have a common property,— mice and elephants, spiders and birds.
Mystery
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.
Night
The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brilliant, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion?
Why does the evening, why does the night, put warmer love in our hearts?— Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness?—Or is it the exalting separation from the turmoils of life, that veiling of the world in which, for the soul, nothing remains but souls?
Opportunity
Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
Pain
The most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or immaterial, namely our impatience, and the delusion that it will last forever.
Paradise
Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away. Indeed our first parents were not to be deprived of it.
Parting
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.
Passion
The only praiseworthy indifference is an acquired one; we must feel as well as control our passions.
Pedantry
It is not a circumscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant.
Poetry
There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all those incorporeal spirits, and the perfume of all these flowers.
Politeness
Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.
Poverty
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
Prejudice
Because a total eclipse of the sun is above my own head, I will not therefore insist that there must be an eclipse in America also; and because snowflakes fall before my own nose, I need not believe that the Gold Coast is also snowed up.
Present
Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a section; and enjoy and improve the present without wishing, through haste, to rush on to another.
Principles
Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.
Providence
He who is truly religious finds a providence not more truly in the history of the world, than in his own personal and family history.—The rainbow which hangs a splendid circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by the same sun in the dew-drop of the lowly flower.
Remembrance
Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away.
Remembrances last longer than present realities; I have preserved blossoms for many years, but never fruits.
Reverence
The Turks carefully collect every scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may be written thereon.
Satire
In fashionable circles, satire which attacks the fault, rather than the person, is unwelcome; while that which attacks the person and spares the fault is always acceptable.
Scepticism
I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition, than in air rarified to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
Self-Examination
Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thine abode.
Sensibility
Men's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell; like the glaciers, which are transparent and rosy-hued only at sunrise and sunset, but throughout the day are gray and cold.
Silence
It is only reason that teaches silence; the heart teaches us to speak.
Sleep
Sleep, the antechamber of the grave.
Sorrow
Our sorrows are like thunder-clouds, which seem black in the distance, but grow lighter as they approach.
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.
A small sorrow distracts; a great one makes us collected.
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 eyes of birds when we wish them to sing?
The sorrows of a noble soul are as May frosts, which precede the milder seasons; but the sorrows of a hardened, lost soul, are as the autumn frosts, which foretell but the coming of winter.
Spring
Stately spring! whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening.
Sublimity
The sublime is the temple-step of religion, as the stars are of immeasurable space. When what is mighty appears in nature,—a storm, thunder, the starry firmament, death,—then utter the word "God" before the child. A great misfortune, a great blessing, a great crime, a noble action are building sites for a child's church.
Suffering
To love all mankind a cheerful state of being is required; but to see into mankind, into life, and still more into ourselves, suffering is requisite.
Sunset
More joyful eyes look at the setting, than at the rising sun.—Burdens are laid down by the poor, whom the sun consoles more than the rich.—I yearn toward him when he sets, not when he rises.
Talking
One learns tacturnity best among those who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn.
Tears
O, banish the tears of children! Continual rains upon the blossoms are hurtful.
The tear of joy is a pearl of the first water; the mourning tear, only of the second.
Thought
"Give me," said Herder to his son, as he lay in the parched weariness of his last illness, give me a great thought, that I may quicken myself with it."
Time
Time is the chrysalis of eternity.
Trifles
Trifles we should let not plague us only, but also gratify us; we should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also.
Trust
How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of him who bears up the world.
Truth
According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected.—I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.
Vanity
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure, and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie down deep like gold, and are discovered with difficulty—strength, profoundness of intellect, morality—leave their possessors modest and proud.
Variety
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.
Voice
When those we have loved have long vanished from the earth, then will the beloved voice come back and bring with it all our old tears and the disconsolate heart that sheds them.
Weakness
The more weakness, the more falsehood; strength goes straight; every cannon-ball that has in it hollows and holes goes crooked. Weaklings must lie.
Wife
No man can live piously or die righteously without a wife.
Wishes
The apparently irreconcilable dissimilarity between our wishes and our means, between our hearts and this world, remains a riddle.
Woman
Let a woman once give you a task, and you are hers, heart and soul; all your care and trouble lend new charms to her, for whose sake they were taken. To rescue, to revenge, to instruct or protect a woman is all the same as to love her.
Oh, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein!
Youth
The youth of the soul is everlasting, and eternity is youth.
