Time & Perspective Quote by Richard Le Gallienne

Le Gallienne isn’t defending fairy tales; he’s defending the cultural technology of myth. His line draws a sharp boundary between “fancies” (private whim, disposable entertainment) and myths with “something more” (stories built to bear weight). The quiet provocation is that time, usually cast as myth’s enemy - the solvent of superstition - is actually its collaborator. A living myth doesn’t survive despite history; it feeds on it.

The key word is “accretions,” a geological metaphor that makes belief feel less like sudden revelation than slow sediment. Myths thicken as generations pile on lived experience: new crises, new desires, new moral vocabularies. Each era adds its own interpretive layer, polishing certain facets, dulling others, sometimes misreading the original entirely - and that’s the point. Le Gallienne implies that “value” isn’t purity or fidelity; it’s usability. A myth earns its keep by remaining legible under pressure, adaptable without snapping.

Context matters: writing from the late-Victorian/early-modernist hinge, Le Gallienne lived through a culture both enchanted by aestheticism and increasingly suspicious of inherited narratives. His claim sidesteps the era’s tired fight between faith and skepticism. You don’t have to believe a myth literally to grant it compound interest. Human experience is the engine that keeps it relevant, even when the old gods are gone.

Subtext: the modern age can’t stop making myths; it can only pretend it has outgrown them.