Rome wasn't built in a day

"Rome wasn't built in a day" is an adage attesting to the need for time to create great things. It is the usual English translation of a medieval French phrase, «Rome ne fu[t] pas faite toute en un jour», from the collection Li Proverbe au Vilain (published around 1190; reprinted here). The modern French form is «Rome ne s'est pas faite en un jour.»

The expression (as "Rome was not built in one day") is given in English in John Heywood's A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue (c. 1538; reprinted here), while Queen Elizabeth referred to the idea in Latin in an address at Cambridge in 1563.^[1]

^ «Hæc tamen vulgaris sententia me aliquantulum recreavit, quæ etsi non auferre, tamen minuere possit dolorem meum, quæ quidem sententia hæc est, Romam uno die non fuisse conditam.» "But this common saying has given me a certain amount of comfort – a saying which cannot take away, but can at least lessen, the grief that I feel; and the saying is, that Rome was not built in one day." (See here.) The present perfect and oratio recta version of the Latin saying – the version one would use for a stand-alone quotation – would be Roma uno die non est condita.

References

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[1] «Hæc tamen vulgaris sententia me aliquantulum recreavit, quæ etsi non auferre, tamen minuere possit dolorem meum, quæ quidem sententia hæc est, Romam uno die non fuisse conditam.» "But this common saying has given me a certain amount of comfort – a saying which cannot take away, but can at least lessen, the grief that I feel; and the saying is, that Rome was not built in one day." (See here.) The present perfect and oratio recta version of the Latin saying – the version one would use for a stand-alone quotation – would be Roma uno die non est condita.

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