Source: Four Tragedies: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes
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Famous Sophocles Quotes
“We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.”
Source: The Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus [and] Antigone
“The truth is what I cherish and that's my strength”
Source: Oedipus the King
“It's terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.”
Source: The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus
“It is not righteousness to outrage A brave man dead, not even though you hate him.”
“Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.”
Source: The Complete Greek Drama: All the Extant Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the Comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, in a Variety of Translations
“Numberless are the world's wonders, but none More wonderful than man.”
Source: The Oedipus Cycle: An English Version
“Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He's fit for public authority.”
Source: Sophocles: The Theban Plays
Source: The Antigone of Sophocles: An English Version by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald
“From suffering that has been/ Decreed no man will ever find escape”
Source: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Electra
“All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.”
Source: The complete Greek tragedies
“There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. Why bewail what is done and cannot be recalled?”
“It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.”
“You don't know what kind of day you will have, until evening.”
Source: Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
“For this I see, that we, all we that live, Are but vain shadows, unsubstantial dreams.”
Source: The Tragedies of Sophocles
“A man is nothing but breath and shadow.”
Source: Sophocles: Fragments
“Time alone reveals the just man; but you might discern a bad man in a single day.”
“He who throws away a friend is as bad as he who throws away his life.”
“Remember, nothing succeeds without toil.”
Source: The Complete Plays of Sophocles
“A word does not frighten the man who, in acting feels no fear.”
“What people believe prevails over the truth.”
Source: Sophocles: Fragments
“I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.”
“It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.”
“A fool cannot be an actor, though an actor may act a fool's part.”