Love makes time pass; time makes love pass.

This French proverb plays on a symmetrical paradox: when one is in love, time seems to fly (“love makes time pass”), yet the passage of time can also erode love (“time makes love pass”). It captures two common experiences at once—love’s power to absorb attention and make hours feel shorter, and time’s power to cool passion, dull novelty, or reveal incompatibilities. The saying is less a cynical dismissal of love than a compact reminder of love’s dependence on renewal: without care, what once accelerated time’s pleasures may be undone by time’s slow attrition. Its balanced phrasing gives it the feel of a moral observation rather than a personal complaint.