Quotes from Sophocles

For e'en the bravest spirits run away When they perceive death pressing on life's heels.

Know'st not whate'er we do is done in love?

By God, I'll have more booty in a moment.

But life takes sudden twists.

Love resistless in fight, all yield at a glance of thine eye, Love who pillowed all night on a maiden's cheek dost lie, Over the upland holds. Shall mortals not yield to thee?

True, as unwisdom is the worst of ills

One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

To yield is grievous, but the obstinate soul That fights with Fate, is smitten grievously.

Chastisement for errors past Wisdom brings to age at last.

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.

I could not turn away from anyone Like you, a stranger, or refuse to help him. I know well, being mortal, that my claim Upon the future is no more than yours.

heaviest of all woe Is theirs whose life is crushed beyond recall.

Without labor nothing prospers.

Best of children, sisters arm-in-arm, we must bear what the gods give us to bear-- don't fire up your hearts with so much grief. No reason to blame the pass you've come to now.

Inviolable, untrod; goddesses, Dread brood of Earth and Darkness, here abide.

What woe is lacking to my tale of woes?

Yes I know sorrow. Know it far too well. My life is a tunnel choked by the sweepings of dread.

Electra, grieving for death, for her father, as a nightingale grieving always.

It is not in words that I should wish my life to be distinguished, but rather in things done.

My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they're popular; you make them because they're right

And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadow.

We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us

Commit cruelty on a person long enough and the mind begins to go.

I have seen or heard of no other man whom destiny treated with such enmity as it did Philoktetes