ProverbWisdomEnglish origin14th c.

Time heals all wounds

Meaning: Emotional pain fades with the passage of time.

Origin: That grief softens with time is an idea found across classical and medieval writing. Quotation books credit the Greek playwright Menander with calling time the healer of all necessary evils, but the line can't be matched to his surviving fragments. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (1380s) has "As tyme hem hurt, a tyme doth hem cure," and the exact wording appears in H. Rider Haggard's novel Morning Star (1910).

Equivalents in French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Korean

  • French: Le temps guérit toutes les blessures (literally: Time heals all wounds)
  • Spanish: El tiempo todo lo cura (literally: Time cures everything)
  • German: Die Zeit heilt alle Wunden (literally: Time heals all wounds)
  • Polish: Czas leczy rany (literally: Time heals wounds)
  • Korean: 세월이 약 (Sewori yak) (literally: Time is medicine)

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