Quotes from Sophocles

There is no success without hardship.

Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure.

Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to

Men of ill judgment often ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.

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

But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.

All a man's affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him...

Better to die, and sleep The never-waking sleep, than linger on And dare to live when the soul's life is gone.

It is not righteousness to outragea brave man dead, not even though you hate him.

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions

Sons are the anchors of a mother's life.

The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his great sickening cupRecklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.

Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil!This is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down,This is what scatters armies!

Love, unconquerable,Waster of rich men, keeperOf warm lights and all-night vigilIn 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.

Ships are only hulls, high walls are nothing,When no life moves in the empty passageways.

But all your [Creon's] strength is weakness itself againstThe immortal unrecorded laws of God.They are not merely now: they were and shall beForever, beyond man utterly.

Our ship of state, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last.

Old age and the passage of time teach all things.

Let every man in mankind's frailtyConsider his last day; and let nonePresume on his good fortune until he findLife, at his death, a memory without pain.

Not to be born surpasses thought and speech.The second best is to have seen the lightAnd then to go back quickly whence we came.

Silence gives the proper grace to women.

It is a good thingTo escape from death, but it is not great pleasureTo bring death to a friend.