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Sophocles: 136 quotes8 likes

“Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.”

Sophocles Electra

Electra, 1007.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”

Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus

Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1616–18

“Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man.”

Sophocles

Variant translation: There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.
Source: Antigone, Line 333 (Ode I)

“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Line 1347, closing lines

“A wise player ought to accept his throws and score them, not bewail his luck.”

Sophocles

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.

“If it were possible to heal sorrow by weeping and to raise the dead with tears, gold were less prized than grief.”

Sophocles

Scyrii, Frag. 510.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“For God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Line 123

“The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Line 720

“Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Lines 295-303

“The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”

Sophocles

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".

“The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.”

Sophocles

Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 872.

“Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.”

Sophocles

Fragment 288. (Plumptre's translation, as cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1906)
Variant: Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

“Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.”

Sophocles

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.”

Sophocles

Hipponous, fragment 280.

“It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Line 437

“Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came.”

Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus

Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1225; English translation by Sir Richard Jebb

“Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,
Trembles before your glory.”

Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Line 781 (Ode III)