Aeschylus Quotes

120 Sourced Quotes

We must pronounce him fortunate who has ended his life in fair prosperity.

Aeschylus
I pray the gods some respite from the weary task of this long year's watch that lying on the Atreidae's roof on bended arm, doglike, I have kept, marking the conclave of all the night's stars, those potentates blazing in the heavens that bring winter and summer to mortal men, the constellations, when they wane, when they rise.

Aeschylus
On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.

Aeschylus
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Aeschylus
Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.

Aeschylus
"Reverence for parents" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.

Aeschylus
Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

Aeschylus
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.

Aeschylus
For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another's happiness.

Aeschylus
What is pleasanter than the tie of host and guest?

Aeschylus
Ye waves
That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe
Your crisped smiles.

Aeschylus
Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?

Aeschylus
So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

Aeschylus
She [Helen] brought to Ilium her dowry, destruction.

Aeschylus
It is an easy thing for one whose foot
Is on the outside of calamity
to give advice.

Aeschylus
Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

Aeschylus
What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?

Aeschylus
I pray for no more youth To perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time.

Aeschylus
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.

Aeschylus
Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.

Aeschylus
I think the slain care little if they sleep or rise again.

Aeschylus
Obedience is the mother of success, and success the parent of salvation.

Aeschylus
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse.

Aeschylus
But when the dust has drunk the blood of men,
No resurrection comes for one who's dead.

Aeschylus
Let war stay abroad; it makes no difficulty in coming, for the man who will have in him a strong desire for glory. I disapprove of a bird's battling in its own home.

Aeschylus
The tongue of slander is too prompt with wanton malice to wound the stranger.

Aeschylus
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Aeschylus
For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.

Aeschylus
For the impious act begets more after it, like to the parent stock.

Aeschylus
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Aeschylus