Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Old Age

• We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Time, Age, Faults

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Knowledge, Intelligent, People

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.74, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Elderly, Wish

• Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Birthday, Errors, Long

• What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Age, Youth, Abundance

  Wahrheit und Dichtung (Poetry and Truth) pt. 2, ch. 6 (1811 - 1833)

• It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Thinking, Elderly

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Rights, Childhood

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Age, Youth, Fortune

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wise, Maturity, Names

• One spares old people just as one spares children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, People, Age

• What you desire when young, you have in abundance when old.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Age, Desire, Youth

• It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wisdom, Age, World

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Love, Elderly, Years

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wise, Years, People

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.477, Ravenio Books

• One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mistake, Age, Needs

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