Aging & Wisdom Quote by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s line is a dare dressed up as humility: if you can do the impossible, then I’ll hear you out. The speaker isn’t asking for advice so much as exposing the fraudulence of certainty. “Seeds of time” turns history into agriculture, a metaphor that flatters human planning while quietly mocking it. Seeds suggest potential, not destiny; time is a field where outcomes sprout unevenly, if at all. The image is tactile and ordinary, which makes the claim of prediction feel even more absurdly grand. Anyone can stare at seeds. No one can guarantee the harvest.

The subtext is power, not philosophy. In Macbeth, Banquo uses this phrasing to test the witches after they’ve offered alluring prophecies. It’s a rhetorical tripwire: show me you can discriminate between futures, not just toss out flattering ambiguities. Shakespeare understands how prophecy works on the mind: it colonizes your choices while pretending merely to describe them. The witches’ predictions don’t just forecast Macbeth’s rise; they supply the emotional permission slip for violence, ambition, and paranoia.

“Which grain will grow and which will not” also frames fate as selective and capricious, not moral. Some seeds fail without reason. That’s the unsettling implication Banquo senses, and the tragedy Macbeth ignores. The line lands because it captures a modern feeling, too: we live surrounded by confident forecasts - political, financial, personal - and still suspect the world is less spreadsheet than weather. Shakespeare gives that suspicion a single, elegant image, then sharpens it into a challenge: prove you can see the future, or admit you’re just selling stories.