“Temos de suportar com o coração impávido a sorte que nos é imposta e admitir a impossibilidade de fazermos frente à força irresistível da fatalidade.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“But concern not thou thyself vainly with matters that are of no advantage.”
Source: Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes
“For pride grows rankly, and to ripeness brings
The curse of fate, and reaps, for harvest, tears!”
Source: The Persians
“No light thing is it, to come back from death,
For, in good sooth, the gods of nether gloom
Are quick to seize but late and loth to free!”
Source: The Persians
“Even so is the Libyan fable famed abroad: the eagle, pierced by the bow-sped shaft, looked at the feathered device, and said, “Thus, not by others, but by means of our own plumage, are we slain.”
“I beg you, alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune wanders everywhere, and settles now upon one and now upon another.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“He who learns must suffer' and that 'against our will comes wisdom through the awful grace' of enduring pain...”
Source: The 'Agamemnon' of Aeschylus: A radical interpretation, translation and commentary
“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
“He has opened the way of wisdom to mortals, by proclaiming as a sovereign law: By suffering comes understanding”
Source: Agamemnon
“Zeus, whose will has marked for man
The sole way where wisdom lies;
Ordered one eternal plan:
Man must suffer to be wise.
Head-winds heavy with past ill
Stray his course and cloud his heart:
Sorrow takes the blind soul's part -
Man grows wise against his will.
For powers who rule from thrones above
By ruthlessness commend their love.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
“Trust my folly then, since it is best
for a man truly wise to be thought a fool.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“Learning comes through pain.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
“Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out; and that is far the most unhappy thing of all.
-Cassandra”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
“For Ares, lord of strife,
Who doth the swaying scales of battle hold,
War’s money-changer, giving dust for gold,
Sends back, to hearts that held them dear,
Scant ash of warriors, wept with many a tear,
Light to the hand, but heavy to the soul;
Yea, fills the light urn full
With what survived the flame—
Death’s dusty measure of a hero’s frame!”
Source: Agamemnon
“And there they ring the walls, the young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.”
Source: Agamemnon
“The brave heart is called to school itself
In slow endurance against
Griefs that strike deep into the bosom”
“You are young and young your rule and you think that the tower in which you live is free from sorrow: from it have I not seen two tyrants thrown? The third, who now is king, I shall yet live to see him fall, of all three most suddenly, most dishonored.”
“Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.
But there is a cure in the house, and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground --
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.”
Source: The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers and the Furies
“You patronize me like some little woman
with no mind to call her own.
I speak with heart devoid of fear
to those with wit to understand,
and you can praise me or condemn me
as you like, it's all the same to me.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
“How fain I'd speak to those who know mythought,
And silence keep to those who yet know nought.”
Source: Agamemnon
“Let not a woman’s voice
Be loud in council! for the things without,
A man must care; let women keep within—
Even then is mischief all too probable!
Hear ye? or speak I to unheeding ears?”
Source: The Seven Against Thebes
“I know the stars by heart,
the armies of the night, and there in the lead the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer, bring us all we have--
our great blazing kings of the sky, I know them, when they rise and when the fall . . .”
Source: Agamemnon
“Time shell be the limit of my suffering.”
Source: Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes
“But you cannot speak of any glory for happenings that are at once evil and held in dishonor.”
Source: The Seven Against Thebes
“Commander against commander, brother against brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves to protect against spears and stones!”
Source: The Seven Against Thebes
“When one is wise, it's wisest to seem foolish.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“The successful are not tolerated.”
Source: The Ancient Greek Drama Collection: The Plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
“He who is not enviable is not admirable.”
Source: Aeschyli Prometheus Vinctus: Ad Fidem Manuscriptorum (1812)
“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“Thou beholdest a spectacle ill-sighted to the eye. (Vulcan)”
Source: Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes
“To be fortunate is God, and more than God to mortals.”
“I, schooled in misery, know many purifying rites, and I know where speech is proper and where silence.”
“Ye waves That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe Your crisped smiles.”
Source: The Tragedies of Æschylus translated into English verse, with notes . By R. Potter
“Report uttered by the people is everywhere of great power.”
“For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow: it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.”
“For a single path leads to the house of Hades.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life's end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“Long tarries destiny, But comes to those who pray.”
Source: The Tragedies of Æschylos: A New Translation, with a Biographical Essay, and an Appendix of Rhymed Choral Odes
“Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast, He dieth not, unless the appointed time, The limit of his life's span, coincide; Nor does the man who by the hearth at home Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.”
Source: The Tragedies of Aeschylos: The Persians. The seven who fought against Thebes. Prometheus bound. The suppliants. Fragments. Appendix of rhymed choruses
“And now it goes as it goes and where it ends is Fate. And neither by singeing flesh nor tipping cups of wine nor shedding burning tears can you enchant away the rigid Fury.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides
“For wherein is life sweet to him who suffers grief?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“Joy steals upon me, such joy as calls forth tears.”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides
“Respect the altar of Justice and do not, looking to profit, dishonor it by spurning with godless foot; for punishment will come upon you.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water.”
Source: The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia
“Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)
“The so-called mother of the child isn't the child's begetter, but only a sort of nursing soil for the new-sown seed. The man, the one on top, is the true parent, while she, a stranger, foster's a stranger's sprout.”
Source: The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia
“This is the law: blood spilt upon the ground cries out for more.”
Source: The Libation Bearers: And The Eumenides: The Oresteia, Parts II and III.
“Watchful are the Gods of all Hands with slaughter stained. The black Furies wait, and when a man Has grown by luck, not justice, great, With sudden overturn of chance They wear him to a shade, and, cast Down to perdition, who shall save him?”
Source: The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides
“In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain.”
Source: Nine Greek Dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes
