Skip to content

Sappho on Beauty

630 BC–570 BC Greece

← All quotes by Sappho

4 quotes

A handsome man guards his image a while;
a good man will one day take on beauty.

To have beauty is to have only that,
but to have goodness
is to be beautiful
too.

Some say a host of cavalry, some say infantry.
Some say a host of ships, is the loveliest thing
Upon this dark earth; but I say
It's whatever you love.

Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen;
Goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.

Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (1955)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sappho (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.