Sophocles - Oedipus at Colonus

18 Sourced Quotes

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One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.

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

Sophocles
Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light And then to go back quickly whence we came.

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

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

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

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

Sophocles
Whoever has a keen eye for profits, is blind in relation to his craft.

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

Sophocles
For every nation that lives peaceably, there will be many others to grow hard and push their arrogance to extremes; the gods attend to these things slowly. But they attend to those who put off God and turn to madness.

Sophocles
It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong.

Sophocles
We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.

Sophocles
The immortal
Gods alone have neither age nor death!
All other things almighty Time disquiets.

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
To die would be good, but never to have been born would be better.

Sophocles