Sophocles Quotes

No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.
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
Success is dependent on effort.
Sophocles
Is anyone in all the world safe from unhappiness?
Sophocles
Time is a kindly god.
Sophocles
It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
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
What fate can be worse than to know we have no one but ourselves to blame for our misfortunes!
Sophocles
All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.
Sophocles
Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.
Sophocles
Kindness gives birth to kindness.
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
Seize the hour.
Sophocles
All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.
Sophocles
Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.
Sophocles
Kindness gives birth to kindness.
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
Seize the hour.
Sophocles
Chance never helps those who do not help themselves.
Sophocles
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles
Kindness gives birth to kindness.
Sophocles
Whom Jupiter would destroy he first drives mad.
Sophocles
One learns by doing the thing for though you think you know it you have no certainty until you try.
Sophocles
Best to live lightly unthinkingly.
Sophocles
Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.
Sophocles
Wisdom is the most important part of happiness.
Sophocles
When a man has lost all happiness he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.
Sophocles
To throw away an honest friend is as it were to throw your life away.
Sophocles
Rather throw away that which is dearest to you your own life than turn away a good friend.
Sophocles
You win the victory when you yield to friends.
Sophocles
One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.
Sophocles
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.
Sophocles
Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not help himself.
Sophocles
How dangerous can false reasoning prove!
Sophocles
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Sophocles
Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.
Sophocles
There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird,When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone." - Sentry
Sophocles
Without labor nothing prospers.
Sophocles
Time, which sees all things, has found you out.
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
We long to have again the vanished past, in spite of all its pain.
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
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
Thy life is safe while any god saves mine.
Sophocles
There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness
Sophocles
It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not.
Sophocles
Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong.
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
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
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
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
In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!
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