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Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
Sappho
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Beauty is fleeting, but goodness is enduring and timeless.

This quote by Sappho emphasizes the transient nature of physical beauty as opposed to the lasting quality of goodness. While beauty may capture our attention and admiration, it is goodness—characterized by moral integrity and virtue—that holds enduring value and significance, continuing to inspire and impact future generations.

Themes

BeautyGoodnessEnduranceVirtueTransience

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote in a speech about inner beauty at a community event.

More from Sappho

Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain _x000D_ shaking ancient oaks.
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When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me and a trembling seizes me all over.
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Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.
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Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us
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Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die.
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The moon is setand the Pleiades; Middle ofthe night, time passes by,I lie alone.
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