Quotes by Jean Paul Richter

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.

— Jean Paul Richter

The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.

— Jean Paul Richter

The last, best fruit that comes 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.

— Jean Paul Richter

  ​ The youth of the soul is everlasting, and eternity is youth.

— Jean Paul Richter

  ​ When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity—imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment—then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.

— Jean Paul Richter

The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment.

— Jean Paul Richter