Euripidés Quotes

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”

“The wisest men follow their own direction.”

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

“Friends show their love in times of trouble.”

“One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.”

“Leave no stone unturned.”

“He is not a lover who does not love forever.”

Heraclidæ (c 428 BC)

Euripidés Quotes about love

“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

“When love is in excess, it brings a man no honor, no worthiness.”

Source: Medea

“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.”

Euripidés Orestes

Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 298, as translated by William Arrowsmith

“For in other ways a woman is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love, no other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.”

“It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved.”

Source: Medea

“The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.”

Euripidés Quotes about men

“The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.”

“Do not mistake the rule of force
for true power. Men are not shaped by force.”

Ægeus, Frag. 7

“Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.”

Source: The Bacchae

“p>Helen: What happened in my heart, to make me leave my home
And my own land, to follow where a stranger led?
Rail at the goddess; be more resolute than Zeus,
Who holds power over all other divinities
But is himself the slave of love. Show Aphrodite
Your indignation; me, pardon and sympathy.Hecabe: No; Paris was an extremely handsome man – one look,
And your appetite became your Aphrodite. Why,
Men's lawless lusts are all called love – it's a confusion
Easily made.”

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

Euripidés The Trojan Women

Troades (c. 415 BC), lines 946–950 and 987–990 (tr. Philip Vellacott)

“Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.”

“The gifts of a bad man bring no good with them.”

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 669

Euripidés: Trending quotes

“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”

Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 618

“Cleverness is not wisdom.”

Phrixus, Frag. 830

“Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour”

Euripidés Quotes

“He who believes needs no explanation.”

Source: Medea

“Account no man happy till he dies.”

Source: The Bacchae

“When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone.”

Sophocles in Oedipus Rex
Variant in Herodotus 1.32: Count no man happy until he is dead.
Misattributed

“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.”

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.

Euripidés Bellerophon

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.”

Euripidés Orestes

Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 907

“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.”

Euripidés The Phoenician Women

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.”

“Man's most valuable trait
is a judicious sense of what not to believe.”

Heraclidæ (c 428 BC); quoted by Aristophanes in The Wasps
Source: The Children of Herakles

Euripidés Helen

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

“Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.”

“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.”

Phœnix Frag. 809

“Anger exceeding limits causes fear and excessive kindness eliminates respect.”

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.”

“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”

“Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.”

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.”

Alexander Frag. 44

“When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.”

Bacchæ l. 395
Source: The Bacchae

“Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”

“Your very silence shows you agree.”

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”

“I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief”

Source: Medea

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

“Arm yourself, my heart: the thing that you must do is fearful, yet inevitable.”

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

“Experience, travel - these are an education in themselves.”

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

“tell me how does it feel with my teeth in your heart!”

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.”

Source: Medea

“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 783-4

Euripidés Iphigenia in Tauris

Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 721

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.”

“I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.”

Phrixus, Frag. 927

“It's human; we all put self interest first.”

Source: Medea

“The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.”

Source: Medea

“ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred with out a head”

“Prosperity is full of friends.”

“Authority is never without hate.”

Euripidés Ion

Ion (c. 421-408 BC) as translated by Ronald F. Willetts

“For with slight efforts how should we obtain great results? It is foolish even to desire it.”

“She sings a dark destructive song.”

“I understand too well the dreadful act
I'm going to commit, but my judgement
can't check my anger, and that incites
the greatest evils human beings do.”

Source: Medea

“I care for riches, to make gifts
To friends, or lead a sick man back to health
With ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth
For daily gladness; once a man be done
With hunger, rich and poor are all as one.”

Source: Medea

Euripidés Electra

Electra (413 BC)

“Silence is an answer in the eyes of the wise.”

“Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.”

Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977
Variant translation: Silence is true wisdom's best reply. (See Discussion page for sourcing information)

Euripidés Antiope

Antiope, Frag. 204

“In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.”

Euripidés Hippolytus

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.”

“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.”

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 726

Euripidés Helen

Helen (412 BC), as translated by Richmond Lattimore

“It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.”

“Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore.”

Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 964

Euripidés Hippolytus

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)

“Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.”

“A bad beginning makes a bad ending.”

Œdipus, Frag. 546

“Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame.”

Melanippe the Wise (fragment)
Variant: A bad ending follows a bad beginning.