Quotes from Sophocles

For now I feel All we who live are but an empty show And idle pageant of a shadowy dream.

Of happiness the chiefest part IS a wise heart

Thou wouldst make a good monarch of a desert

forbear, or I shall hate thee soon, And the dead man will hate thee too, with cause. Say I am mad and give my madness rein To wreck itself; the worst that can befall Is but to die an honorable death.

Compassion limits even the power of God.

for I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living:

I only ask to live, with pure faith keeping In word and deed that Law which leaps the sky, Made of no mortal mould, undimmed, unsleeping Whose living godhead does not age or die.

A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth, But by the dead commended; and with them I shall abide for ever.  As for thee, Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.   ISMENE

To look on self-wrought woes, when no other has had a hand in them- this lays sharp pangs to the soul.

What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island-- you and you alone.

I need one food: I must not violate Elektra

I pity him in his misery for all that he is my foe, because he is bound fast to a dread doom. I think of my own lot no less than his. For I see that we are phantoms, all we who live, or fleeting shadows.

Thou seek'st to part us, wrapping in soft words Hard thoughts.

I owe more to the dead, with whom I will spend a much longer time, than I will ever owe to the living.

The penalty is death: yet hope of gain Hath lured men to their ruin oftentimes.

May the dead forgive me, I can do no other But as I am commanded; to do more is madness. - Ismene, Antigone (The Theban Plays) by Sophocles

To me, excessive silence seems to bode as ill as too much shouting.

What you cannot enforce, do not command!

Of evils current upon earth The worst is money. Money 'tis that sacks Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home; Warps and seduces native innocence, And breeds a habit of dishonesty.

The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.

I am determined that never, if I can help it, Shall evil triumph over good. - Creon

In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!

Numberless are the world's wonders

The pains we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all.