Quotes from Sophocles

It's no city at all, owned by one man alone.

He has the thousand-yard stare.

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.

Banish the man, or pay back blood with blood. Murder sets the plague-storm on the city.

It is the task of a good man to help those in misfortune

Every slander wins belief Aimed at souls whose worth is chief:

Never since that time has this house got itself clear of rawblood butchery.

Burn that god of death that all gods hate!

Laius was killed, they say, by certain travelers.

KLYTEMNESTRA Go ahead. Permission granted. If you always spoke in a tone this calm, it wouldn't be so painful.

Last night was a night of bad dreams and ambiguous visions.

What is it that goes on four feet, three feet and two feet . . . and is most feeble when it walks on four?" His answer was "man—on all fours as a baby, on two feet at maturity, on three as an old man with a stick.

Upon that foreign soil he chose Died he! For ever laid Low, in the kindly shade, He left behind no tearless grief, No measured mourning, dull and brief, These eyes are wet With weeping yet, Nor know I how to find relief. Antigone

How terrible—to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees! I knew it well, but I put it from my mind, else I never would have come.

The powe if fate is something terrible. It cannot be escaped--not with wealth or by war, not with a tower ir a sea-lashed black ship.

This play, it is generally agreed, was produced before and fairly close to the year 441 B.C.

None of you knows— and I will never reveal my dreadful secrets, not to say your own.

You criticize my temper ... unaware of the one you live with, you revile me.

What will come will come. Even if I shroud it all in silence.

they] reason'd high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost. (Paradise Lost 2.658

Seven matched with seven, at each gate one, Their captains, when the day was done, Left for our Zeus who turned the scale, The brazen tribute in full tale: - All save the horror-burdened pair, Dire children of despair, Who from one sire, one mother, drawing breath, Each with conquering lance in rest Against a true born brother's breast, Found equal lots in death.

You are the curse, the corruption of the land!

The truth with all its power lives inside me.

Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.