Sophocles Quotes

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.

Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong.

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

May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene

There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird,When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone." - Sentry

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.

Money! Money's the curse of man, none greater.That's what wrecks cities, banishes men from homes,Tempts and deludes the most well-meaning soul,Pointing out the way to infamy and shame." - Creon

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.

Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evilbut if some god shakes your houseruin arrivesruin does not leaveit comes tolling over the generationsit comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floorand all your thrashed coasts groan

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.

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

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

Evil gains work their punishment.

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.

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.

You must remember that no one lives a life free from pain and suffering.

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.