“Life envy-free is life unenviable.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 939 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
Aeschylus: Quotes about life
Aeschylus was ancient Athenian playwright. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Aeschylus:
238
quotes
10
likes
“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
Guard well and reverence that form of government Which will eschew alike licence and slavery; Guard well and reverence that form of government Which will eschew alike licence and slavery; And from your polity do not wholly banish fear. For what man living, freed from fear, will still be just? Hold fast such upright fear of the law’s sanctity,
Source: Phillip Vellacott, The Oresteian Trilogy, Penguin 1973 ( Google Books https://books.google.com.au/books?id=tuRiOESBVjkC) source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 526–530 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Aeschylus / Quotes / Oresteia (458 BC) / Eumenides
“Only when man's life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.”
Call no man happy till he is dead.
Also attributed to Sophocles in "Oedipus The King".
Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 928–929. Variant translations:
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1388–1392 (tr. Ian Johnston)
“But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no return to life.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 647–648 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)
“None of their own will choose a bond-slave's life.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 953 (tr. E. H. Plumptre)
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 312–320 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)