Life & Wisdom Quote by Virgil

Time doesn’t merely pass in Virgil’s line; it bolts. “Flying” turns time into a living force with wings and direction, a thing you can’t negotiate with, only watch as it vanishes over the horizon. The phrase “never to return” lands like a slammed door: not “hard to get back,” not “usually gone,” but permanently unrecoverable. That absolutism is the point. It’s less a lament than a pressure tactic, a verbal prod aimed at anyone tempted by delay.

Virgil was writing in a Roman world that treated time as moral terrain. The Republic’s old civic ideal prized action, duty, and public achievement; the Augustan era refashioned those values into a grand narrative of order and destiny. In that climate, time isn’t private self-care currency. It’s a scarce civic resource, the stuff from which legacy is made. The subtext is blunt: if you waste your hours, you’re not just failing yourself; you’re failing the story you’re supposed to serve.

The line also works because it carries a double anxiety. On one level, it’s existential: mortality is the ultimate “never to return.” On another, it’s aesthetic and political: the world is changing quickly, eras turn, fortunes shift. Virgil’s genius is packaging that vast unease into an everyday sensation - the familiar feeling of days slipping away - then sharpening it into a command. The wings aren’t poetic decoration; they’re urgency made visible.