Jean Paul Richter

Sleep riches and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is easy to flatter it is harder to praise.

The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind. (Die Probe Eines Genusses ist Seine Erinnerung.)

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

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

A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.

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

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