“God on high
Looks graciously on him whom triumph's hour
Has made not pitiless.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 951–952 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
Fragment 146 (trans. by Plumptre), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), lines 683–685 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
“In every enterprise is no greater evil than bad companionship”
ἐν παντὶ πράγει δ᾽ ἔσθ᾽ ὁμιλίας κακῆς
κάκιον οὐδέν
Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), lines 599–600 (tr. David Grene)
“I, of set will, speak words the wise may learn,
To others, nought remember nor discern.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 38–39 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
“The field of Sin
Brings forth the fruits of Death.”
Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), line 601 (tr. G. M. Cookson)
“Time waxing old can many a lesson teach.”
Variant translations:
Time brings all things to pass.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
Source: Prometheus Bound, line 981 (tr. E. H. Plumptre).
“Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.”
Fragment 384, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 68–71 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
“Too true it is! our mortal state
With bliss is never satiate.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1331–1332 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 834–837
“Dangerous is a people's voice charged with wrath.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 456 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)
“While from inward health doth flow,
Beloved of all, true bliss which mortals seek.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 535–537 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
“Life envy-free is life unenviable.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 939 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 637–639 (tr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
“For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.”
κρεῖσσον γὰρ εἰσάπαξ θανεῖν
ἢ τὰς ἁπάσας ἡμέρας πάσχειν κακῶς.
Variant translation by John Stuart Blackie (1850):
"Life and life's sorrows? Once to die is better
Than thus to drag sick life."
Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 750–751
“For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.”
Variant translation: In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end
This poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 224–225
“Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 1485
“"Reverence for parents" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.”
Source: The Suppliants, line 707; alternately reported with "Honour thy father and thy mother" in place of "Reverence for parents", in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 273–275 (tr. Anna Swanwick)