Sophocles Quotes

For Time calls only once, and that determines all.

~ Sophocles

Haemon: No city is property of a single man.Creon: But custom gives possession to the ruler.Haemon: You'd rule a desert beautifully alone.

~ Sophocles

In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!

~ Sophocles

Your edict, King, was strong,But all your strength is weakness itself againstThe immortal unrecorded laws of God.They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.I knew I must die, even without your decree:I am only mortal. And if I must dieNow, before it is my time to die,Surely this is no hardship: can anyoneLiving, as I live, with evil all about me,Think Death less than a friend?

~ Sophocles

For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.

~ Sophocles

To speak much is one thing, to speak to the point another!

~ Sophocles

Take these things to heart, my son, I warn you.All men make mistakes, it is only human.But once the wrong is done, a mancan turn his back on folly, misfortune too,if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen,and stops his bullnecked ways. Stubbornnessbrands you for stupidity - pride is a crime.

~ Sophocles

Do not believe that you alone can be right.The man who thinks that,The man who maintains that only he has the powerTo reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul—A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

~ Sophocles

Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are rightTo warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—I hope that I shall never want to say!— that youHave reasoned badly. Yet there are other menWho can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.You are not in a position to know everythingThat people say or do, or what they feel:Your temper terrifies them—everyoneWill tell you only what you like to hear.

~ Sophocles

Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong.

~ Sophocles

It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not.

~ Sophocles

There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness

~ Sophocles

Thy life is safe while any god saves mine.

~ Sophocles

TEIRESIAS: Alas, how terrible is wisdom whenit brings no profit to the man that's wise!This I knew well, but had forgotten it,else I would not have come here.

~ Sophocles

TEIRESIAS:You have your eyes but see not where you arein sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.Do you know who your parents are? Unknowingyou are enemy to kith and kinin death, beneath the earth, and in this life.

~ Sophocles

JOCASTA:So clear in this case were the oracles,so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say;what God discovers need of, easilyhe shows to us himself.

~ Sophocles

OEDIPUS:O, O, O, they will all come,all come out clearly! Light of the sun, let melook upon you no more after today!I who first saw the light bred of a matchaccursed, and accursed in my livingwith them I lived with, cursed in my killing.

~ Sophocles

CHORUS:You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.

~ Sophocles

TEIRESIAS:I tell you, king, this man, this murderer(whom you have long declared you are in search of,indicting him in threatening proclamationas murderer of Laius)- he is here.In name he is a stranger among citizensbut soon he will be shown to be a citizentrue native Theban, and he'll have no joyof the discovery: blindness for sightand beggary for riches his exchange,he shall go journeying to a foreign countrytapping his way before him with a stick.He shall be proved father and brother bothto his own children in his house; to herthat gave him birth, a son and husband both;a fellow sower in his father's bedwith that same father that he murdered.Go within, reckon that out, and if you find memistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy.

~ Sophocles

OEDIPUS: Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many- may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearthI pray that I myself may feel my curse. On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken.

~ Sophocles

We long to have again the vanished past, in spite of all its pain.

~ Sophocles

Hail the sun! the brightest of all that everDawned on the City of Seven Gates, City of Thebes!Hail the golden dawn over Dirce's riverRising to speed the flight of the white invaders Homeward in full retreat! - Chorus

~ Sophocles

Time, which sees all things, has found you out.

~ Sophocles

Without labor nothing prospers.

~ Sophocles

There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird,When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone. - Sentry

~ Sophocles

I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.

~ Sophocles

Seize the hour.

~ Sophocles

Why should a man fear since chance is all in all for him and he can clearly fore-know nothing? Best to live lightly as one can unthinking.

~ Sophocles

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

~ Sophocles

It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else has made it.

~ Sophocles

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

~ Sophocles

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.

~ Sophocles

Closer, it’s all right. Touch the man of grief.Do. Don’t be afraid. My troubles are mine and I am the only man alive who can sustain them.

~ Sophocles

No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.

~ Sophocles

War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.

~ Sophocles

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.

~ Sophocles

Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.

~ Sophocles

Not even old age knows how to love death.

~ Sophocles

A man growing old becomes a child again.

~ Sophocles

Old age and the passage of time teach all things.

~ Sophocles