Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Age
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One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.
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So, lively brisk old fellow, don't let age get you down. White hairs or not, you can still be a lover.
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Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,--that of being judged by their peers.
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Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.
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At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.
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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
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Rejoice that you have still have a long time to live, before the thought comes to you that there is nothing more in the world to see.
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All perishable is but an allegory.
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Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly acheive in an age.
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National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.
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Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
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What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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To become aware in time when young of the advantages of age; to maintain the advantages of youth in old age: both are pure fortune.
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Rash combat oft immortalizes man; if he should fall, he is renowned in song; but after-ages reckon not the ceaseless tears which the forsaken woman sheds. Poets tell us not of the many nights consumed in weeping, or of the dreary days wherein her anguished soul vainly yearns to call her loved one back.
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Beware of wishing for anything in youth, because you will get it in middle age.
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Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
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What you desire when young, you have in abundance when old.
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Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.
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One spares old people just as one spares children.
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When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
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What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.
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We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.
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People always fancy that we must become old to become wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were.
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However often we turn to it [the Koran] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence. . . . Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible - ever and anon truly sublime - Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.
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It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.
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All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.
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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
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The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Born: August 28, 1749
- Died: March 22, 1832
- Occupation: Writer