Works
Hippolytus
EuripidésIphigenia in Tauris
EuripidésOrestes
EuripidésThe Phoenician Women
EuripidésHelen
EuripidésIon
EuripidésBellerophon
EuripidésHecuba
EuripidésThe Suppliants
EuripidésAlope
EuripidésAndromeda
EuripidésAntigone
EuripidésAlcmene
EuripidésThe Trojan Women
EuripidésRhesus
EuripidésIphigenia in Aulis
EuripidésCyclops
EuripidésAntiope
EuripidésElectra
EuripidésFamous Euripidés Quotes
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
Bacchæ l. 480
Variant translation: To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.
Variant translation: He were a fool, methinks, who would utter wisdom to a fool. (translated by Edward Philip Coleridge)
Variant translation: Wise words being brought to blinded eyes will seem as things of nought. ( translated by Gilbert Murray http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8418/8418-h/8418-h.htm)
Source: The Bacchae
Euripidés Quotes about love
“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.”
Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 298, as translated by William Arrowsmith
Euripidés Quotes about men
“Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.”
Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
Misattributed
Troades (c. 415 BC), lines 946–950 and 987–990 (tr. Philip Vellacott)
Euripidés: Trending quotes
Euripidés Quotes
“Account no man happy till he dies.”
Sophocles in Oedipus Rex
Variant in Herodotus 1.32: Count no man happy until he is dead.
Misattributed
“When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone.”
Temenidæ Frag. 734
Context: When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.
Bellerophon
Context: Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.
Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence: for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud,
And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day. All divinity
Is built-up from our good and evil luck.
“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”
Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 907
“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.”
Variant: Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.
Source: The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 BC)
“In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.”
Heraclidæ (c 428 BC); quoted by Aristophanes in The Wasps
Source: The Children of Herakles
“Man's most valuable trait
is a judicious sense of what not to believe.”
The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides II: Helen. Hecuba. Andromache. The Trojan women. Ion. Rhesus. The suppliant women by David Grene, Richmond Alexander Lattimore (eds.), Modern Library, 1963, p. 73
Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 358
Context: Oh, if I had Orpheus' voice and poetry
with which to move the Dark Maid and her Lord,
I'd call you back, dear love, from the world below.
I'd go down there for you. Charon or the grim
King's dog could not prevent me then
from carrying you up into the fields of light.
“The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable,
Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.”
Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus
Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus
“Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days.”
Bacchæ l. 395
Source: The Bacchae
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a "heathen proverb" in Daniel, a Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott. The origin of the misattribution to Euripides is unknown. Several variants are quoted in ancient texts, as follows.
Variants and derived paraphrases:
For cunningly of old
was the celebrated saying revealed:
evil sometimes seems good
to a man whose mind
a god leads to destruction.
Sophocles, Antigone 620-3, a play pre-dating any of Euripides' surviving plays. An ancient commentary explains the passage as a paraphrase of the following, from another, earlier poet.
When a god plans harm against a man,
he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.
Quoted in the scholia vetera to Sophocles' Antigone 620ff., without attribution. The meter (iambic trimeter) suggests that the source of the quotation is a tragic play.
For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone,
it first does this: it steals away his mind
and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness,
so that he should know nothing of his mistakes.
Attributed to "some of the old poets" by Lycurgus of Athens in his Oratio In Leocratem [Oration Against Leocrates], section 92. Again, the meter suggests that the source is a tragic play. These lines are misattributed to the much earlier semi-mythical statesman Lycurgus of Sparta in a footnote of recent editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and other works.
The gods do nothing until they have blinded the minds of the wicked.
Variant in 'Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), compiled by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 433.
Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911
The devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
As quoted by Athenagoras of Athens [citation needed]
quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius.
"Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; neo-Latin version. Similar wording is found in James Duport's Homeri Gnomologia (1660), p. 234. "A maxim of obscure origin which may have been invented in Cambridge about 1640" -- Taylor, The Proverb (1931). Probably a variant of the line "He whom the gods love dies young", derived from Menander's play The Double Deceiver via Plautus (Bacchides 816-7).
quem (or quos) Deus perdere vult, dementat prius.
Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
As quoted in George Fox Interpreted: The Religion, Revelations, Motives and Mission of George Fox (1881) by Thomas Ellwood Longshore, p. 154
Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th edition (1992)
Nor do the gods appear in warrior's armour clad
To strike them down with sword and spear
Those whom they would destroy
They first make mad.
Bhartṛhari, 7th c. AD; as quoted in John Brough,Poems from the Sanskrit, (1968), p, 67
vināśakāle viparītabuddhiḥ
Sanskrit Saying (also in Jatak katha): "When a man is to be destroyed, his intelligence becomes self-destructive."
Modern derivatives:
The proverb's meaning is changed in many English versions from the 20th and 21st centuries that start with the proverb's first half (through "they") and then end with a phrase that replaces "first make mad" or "make mad." Such versions can be found at Internet search engines by using either of the two keyword phrases that are on Page 2 and Page 4 of the webpage " Pick any Wrong Card http://www.bu.edu/av/celop2/not_ESL/pick_any_wrong_card.pdf." The rest of that webpage is frameworks that induce a reader to compose new variations on this proverb.
Misattributed
“Arm yourself, my heart: the thing that you must do is fearful, yet inevitable.”
Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus
“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.”
Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 783-4
“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”
Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 721
“Authority is never without hate.”
Ion (c. 421-408 BC) as translated by Ronald F. Willetts
“Silence is an answer in the eyes of the wise.”
Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977
Variant translation: Silence is true wisdom's best reply. (See Discussion page for sourcing information)
“In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.”
Variant translations: Among mortals second thoughts are the wisest.
Second thoughts are ever wiser.
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.
Source: Hippolytus (428 BC), l. 435, as translated by David Grene
“Dishonour will not trouble me, once I am dead.”
Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 726
“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.”
Helen (412 BC), as translated by Richmond Lattimore
“It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.”
Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 964
“Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore.”
Variant translation by David Grene:
My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged.
Source: Hippolytus (428 BC), l. 612, as translated by Gilbert Murray (1954)
“A bad beginning makes a bad ending.”
Melanippe the Wise (fragment)
Variant: A bad ending follows a bad beginning.
