"Time flies never to be recalled"
About this Quote
“Time flies never to be recalled” lands with the clean brutality of a deadline you can’t negotiate. Virgil isn’t offering a motivational poster; he’s issuing a Roman fact of life: time moves, empire or no empire, and it doesn’t loop back for anyone. The line works because it refuses consolation. “Flies” gives time a body - quick, winged, already gone - while “never to be recalled” slams the door on the most tempting human fantasy: that we’ll get a do-over if we wait long enough.
In Virgil’s world, that fantasy had political and personal stakes. Rome was selling itself a story of renewal under Augustus, a city reborn after civil war. Virgil, the era’s great literary architect, understood both the seduction and the cost of that story. The subtext isn’t “be productive”; it’s “don’t confuse propaganda or nostalgia with real reversibility.” You can rebuild monuments and rewrite histories, but you cannot repossess a missed moment, a lost youth, a life spent in the wrong allegiance.
The line also carries a quiet ethical pressure. If time can’t be recalled, then responsibility can’t be postponed indefinitely. Decisions accrue; delay becomes a choice. That’s why the phrase still stings: it collapses the distance between the grand historical sweep Virgil loved and the ordinary human regret he keeps smuggling into it. Time doesn’t just pass. It defects.
In Virgil’s world, that fantasy had political and personal stakes. Rome was selling itself a story of renewal under Augustus, a city reborn after civil war. Virgil, the era’s great literary architect, understood both the seduction and the cost of that story. The subtext isn’t “be productive”; it’s “don’t confuse propaganda or nostalgia with real reversibility.” You can rebuild monuments and rewrite histories, but you cannot repossess a missed moment, a lost youth, a life spent in the wrong allegiance.
The line also carries a quiet ethical pressure. If time can’t be recalled, then responsibility can’t be postponed indefinitely. Decisions accrue; delay becomes a choice. That’s why the phrase still stings: it collapses the distance between the grand historical sweep Virgil loved and the ordinary human regret he keeps smuggling into it. Time doesn’t just pass. It defects.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
|---|---|
| Source | Virgil — Georgics; Latin phrase "Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus" (often rendered in English as "Time flies never to be recalled"). |
More Quotes by Virgil
Add to List
