Old age and the passage of time teach all things.

The line expresses a classical Greek commonplace: experience is the great instructor. “Old age” stands not merely for physical decline but for accumulated encounters with fortune, suffering, and human character; “the passage of time” suggests that understanding often arrives only after events have unfolded and consequences become visible. Attributing the lesson to time also implies humility: wisdom is not fully teachable by precept or youthful cleverness, but is slowly disclosed through living. In Sophoclean tragedy, such a sentiment resonates with plots where characters learn too late—knowledge arrives through endurance, loss, and reflection rather than through certainty at the outset.