Sophocles - Antigone

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The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

Sophocles
From suffering that has been/ Decreed no man will ever find escape

Sophocles
Show me the man who keeps his house in hand,
He's fit for public authority.

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

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

Sophocles
Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In 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.

Sophocles
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

Sophocles
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Sophocles
It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.

Sophocles
It's terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.

Sophocles
Let men be wise by instinct if they can, but when this fails be wise by good advice.

Sophocles
I am the child of Fortune, the giver of good, and I shall not be shamed. She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons; my rising and my falling match with theirs. Born thus, I ask to be no
other man than that I am.

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
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
The stubbornest of wills Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, O'er-heated in the fire to brittleness,Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.

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

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

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

Sophocles
If men live decently it is because discipline
saves their very lives for them.

Sophocles
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man.

Sophocles
I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare — I have no use for him, either.

Sophocles
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

Sophocles
When a man has lost all happiness,
he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.

Sophocles
The kind of man who always thinks that he is right, that his opinions, his pronouncements, are the final word, when once exposed shows nothing there. But a wise man has much to learn without a loss of dignity.

Sophocles
There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.

Sophocles
All that is and shall be,
And all the past, is his [Zeus's].

Sophocles
But all your strength is weakness itself against The immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were and shall be Forever, beyond man utterly.

Sophocles
Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.

Sophocles
Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

Sophocles