Sophocles Quotes

143 Sourced Quotes

It is best to live anyhow, as one may; do not be afraid of marriage with your mother! Many have lain with their mothers in dreams too. It is he to whom such things are nothing who puts up with life best.

Sophocles
One must obey the man whom the city sets up in power in small things and in justice and in its opposite.

Sophocles
Now let the weeping cease; Let no one mourn again. These things are in the hands of God.

Sophocles
Ah, race of mortal men, How as a thing of nought I count ye, though ye live; For who is there of men That more of blessing knows, Than just a little while To seem to prosper well, And, having seemed, to fall?

Sophocles
More men come to doom through dirty profits than are kept by them.

Sophocles
Many are the things that man seeing must understand. Not seeing, how shall he know what lies in the hand of time to come?

Sophocles
You cannot know a man's life before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad.

Sophocles
Look how men live, always precariously balanced between good and bad fortune.

Sophocles
Why should man fear since chance is all in all for him, and he can clearly foreknow nothing? Best to live lightly, as one can, unthinkingly.

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

Sophocles
No yield to the dead! Never stab the fighter when he's down. Where's the glory, killing the dead twice over?

Sophocles
The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, most often ends in scraps and shatterings.

Sophocles
When people fall in deep distress, their native sense departs.

Sophocles
What men have seen they know; But what shall come hereafter No man before the event can see, Nor what end waits for him.

Sophocles
Dreadful is the mysterious power of fate; there is no deliverance from it by wealth or by war, by walled city or dark, seabeaten ships.

Sophocles
Man's highest blessedness, In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the Gods, 'Tis best in word or deed To shun unholy pride; Great words of boasting bring great punishments, And so to grey-haired age Teach wisdom at the last.

Sophocles
A man who deals in fairness with his own, he can make manifest justice in the state.

Sophocles
Many things are formidable, and none more formidable than man.

Sophocles
For whoever knows how to return a kindness he has received must be a friend above all price.

Sophocles
You see how when rivers are swollen in winter those trees that yield to the flood retain their branches, but those that offer resistance perish, trunk and all.

Sophocles
And if my present actions strike you as foolish, let's just say I've been accused of folly by a fool.

Sophocles
If you are out of trouble, watch for danger. And when you live well, then consider the most your life, lest ruin take it unawares.

Sophocles
We should not speak of one that prospers well As happy, till his life have run its course, And reached its goal. An evil spirit's gift In shortest time has oft laid low the state Of one full rich in great prosperity, When the change comes, and so the Gods appoint.

Sophocles
Even the bold will fly when they see Death drawing in close enough to end their life.

Sophocles
It becomes one, while exempt from woes, to look to the dangers.

Sophocles
Desire looks clear from the eyes of a lovely bride: power as strong as the founded world

Sophocles
Though a man be wise it is no shame for him to live and learn.

Sophocles
Those griefs smart most which are seen to be of our own choice.

Sophocles
No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see those ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.

Sophocles
No greater evil can a man endure Than a bad wife, nor find a greater good Than one both good and wise; and each man speaks As judging by the experience of his life.

Sophocles