“Afterthought makes the first resolve a liar.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
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Famous Sophocles Quotes
Source: Oedipus the King
“Whatever God has brought about Is to be borne with courage.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“Even the bold will fly when they see Death drawing in close enough to end their life.”
Source: Sophocles
“If men live decently it is because discipline saves their very lives for them.”
Source: Sophocles
“It is always fair sailing, when you escape evil.”
Source: Sophocles
“Look how men live, always precariously balanced between good and bad fortune.”
Source: Sophocles
“I cannot love a friend whose love is words.”
Source: Sophocles
“It is God's giving if we laugh or weep.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
“An enemy's gift is ruinous and no gift.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
“A man who deals in fairness with his own, he can make manifest justice in the state.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“If they are just, they are better than clever.”
Source: Sophocles
“There are times when even justice brings harm with it.”
Source: Sophocles
“You cannot know a man's life before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad.”
Source: Sophocles
“Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than man.”
Source: Sophocles
“Now let the weeping cease; Let no one mourn again. These things are in the hands of God.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“Let a man nobly live or nobly die.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
“More men come to doom through dirty profits than are kept by them.”
Source: Sophocles
Source: Sophocles
“As they say of the blind, Sounds are the things I see.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“God will not punish the man Who makes return for an injury.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“The sleep of a sick man has keen eyes. It is a sleep unsleeping.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
“The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, most often ends in scraps and shatterings.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“Strike at a great man, and you will not miss.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
“Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted.”
Source: Oedipus the King
“When people fall in deep distress, their native sense departs.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“Great Time makes all things dim.”
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
Source: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
Source: The Tragedies: In Two Volumes
“Men whose wit has been mother of villainy once have learned from it to be evil in all things.”
Source: The Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles
“All a man's affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.”
“Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.”
“Don't you know that silence supports the accuser's charge?”
“Silence is an ornament for women.”
Source: Sophocles, Ajax
“Every man can see things far off but is blind to what is near.”
“There is no greater evil than anarchy.”
Source: The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
“A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.”
“Bear up, my child, bear up; Zeus who oversees and directs all things is still mighty in heaven.”