Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain _x000D_ shaking ancient oaks.
SapphoRead
Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
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
All quotes →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.
SapphoRead
Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.
SapphoRead
Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us
SapphoRead
Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die.
SapphoRead
The moon is setand the Pleiades; Middle ofthe night, time passes by,I lie alone.
SapphoRead
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Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.
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