QuoteProject
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
William Butler Yeats
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Time is the only force that can diminish beauty and innocence.

This quote by William Butler Yeats suggests that the transient nature of time is the sole adversary to beauty and innocence. While external forces may seem threatening, it is ultimately time that erodes the purity and luster of youth and unblemished beauty, serving as a reminder of the inevitable changes that life brings.

Themes

TimeBeautyInnocenceTransienceChange

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of cherishing youth, one might reference this quote to emphasize the fleeting nature of beauty.

More from William Butler Yeats

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler YeatsRead
It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.
William Butler YeatsRead
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler YeatsRead
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
William Butler YeatsRead
For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.
William Butler YeatsRead
Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
William Butler YeatsRead

Similar quotes

God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.
J. I. PackerRead
For a long time, I have been making many predictions, far in advance, of events since come to pass, naming the particular locality. I acknowledge all to have been accomplished through divine power and inspiration.
NostradamusRead
My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyRead
A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.
David Foster WallaceRead
Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.
Albert CamusRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.