“Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.”
Electra, 1007.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1616–18
“Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man.”
Variant translation: There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.
Source: Antigone, Line 333 (Ode I)
“A wise player ought to accept his throws and score them, not bewail his luck.”
Fragment 947.
Phædra
Source: Pearson, A.C. (1917). The Fragments of Sophocles (with additional notes from the papers of Sir R.C. Jebb and W.G. Headlam). Vol. 3. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917. Retrieved on 2017-01-06 from https://archive.org/details/fragmentseditedw03sophuoft.
Scyrii, Frag. 510.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“For God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues.”
Source: Antigone, Line 123
Source: Antigone, Lines 295-303
“The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”
Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 1184, Second Messenger; one commonly quoted translation is, "The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities".
“Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.”
Fragment 288. (Plumptre's translation, as cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1906)
Variant: Heaven never helps the man who will not act.
Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!
This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,
And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—
Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!
Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom
And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,
He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.
[ Tr. E. D. A. Morshead http://books.google.com/books?id=i7wXAAAAYAAJ (1885)]
Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
[quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea]
Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 1529, Choragos.
“Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.”
Hipponous, fragment 280.
“It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.”
Source: Antigone, Line 437
Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1225; English translation by Sir Richard Jebb
Source: Antigone, Line 781 (Ode III)
“Evil sometimes seems good
To a man whose mind
A god leads to destruction.”
Source: Antigone, Lines 620-3