Sophocles was an ancient Greek playwright, dramatist, priest, and politician of Athens. He was also a general for the Athenian Empire in the Peloponnesian Wars, and during his service he led the battle against the Peloponnesian Island of Samos.
Sourced
- Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
But when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable.
- Sons are the anchors of a mother's life.
- No man loves life like him that's growing old.
- When ice appears out of doors, and boys seize it up while it is solid, at first they experience new pleasures. But in the end their pride will not agree to let it go, but their acquisition is not good for them if it stays in their hands. In the same way an identical desire drives lovers to act and not to act.
- The loves of Achilles, only surviving fragment, often quoted as "Love is like ice in the hands of children".
Ajax
- Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,
Befits proud birth.
- Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.
- For kindness begets kindness evermore,
But he from whose mind fades the memory
Of benefits, noble is he no more.
- Men of ill judgement oft ignore the good
That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
Oedipus Rex
- Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.
- I am the child of Fortune, the giver of good, and I shall not be shamed. She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons; my rising and my falling match with theirs. Born thus, I ask to be no other man than that I am.
- Wisdom is a curse when wisdom does nothing for the man who has it.
- I will never reveal my dreadful secrets, or rather, yours.
- How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth!
- The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.
- The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
- Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.
Antigone
- I say this crime is holy.
- It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong.
- No other touchstone can test the heart of a man, the temper of his mind and spirit, till he be tried in the practice of authority and rule.
- When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.
- Don't kill the messenger.
- For God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues.
- Our ship of fate, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last.
- I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare - I have no use for him, either.
- Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.
- Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
- Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.
- that henceforth ye may thieve with better knowledge whence lucre should be won, and learn that it is not well to love gain from every source. For thou wilt find that ill-gotten pelf brings more men to ruin than to weal.
- Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man.
- It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.
- Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
- Show me the man who keeps his house in hand,
He's fit for public authority.
- The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
- Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,
Trembles before your glory.
- Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
- There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
Trachiniae
- A prudent mind can see room for misgiving, lest he who prospers should one day suffer reverse.
- They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me.
- Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.
- Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.
Oedipus at Colonus
- Unwanted favours gain no gratitude.
- One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
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