Aeschylus Quotes

No bribes. Nothing that passes under the roof of a temple Or under the roof of the mouth, can appease heaven's anger Or deflect its aim.

We spoil ourselves with scruples long as things go well.

Base men who prosper are unenviable.

Old men are children once again a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day.

Oaths are not the credit of men but men of oaths.

Words are doctors for the diseased temper.

The unenvied man is not enviable.

Mourn for me rather as living than as dead.

It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man.

Man shall learn from man's lot.

No man looks with love on deeds that to the high Gods hateful prove.

The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter's gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom.

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

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.

ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. ( ... ) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.

For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.

Whenever a man makes haste, God too hastens with him.

My will is mine...I shall not make it soft for you.

But who can describe the overweening pride of men? Or women mad with passion, reckless in their hearts, soulmates to every kind of ruin that befalls us? Wild passion, unrestrained, boundless, that overcomes the women, perverts the yoke of wedlock for beasts and men alike.

So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft: With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.

What good is it to live a life that brings pains?

God ever works with those who work with will.

Sophokles is a playwright fascinated in general by people who say no, people who resist compromise, people who make stumbling blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax.

I have suffered into truth (...) Time refines all things that age with time

His resolve is not to seem the bravest, but to be.

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!

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.

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.

Ye waves That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe Your crisped smiles.

I beg you, alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune wanders everywhere, and settles now upon one and now upon another.

Ares gives his verdict without witnesses.

You shall learn, though late, the lesson of how to be discreet.

Once to die is better than length of days in sorrow without end.

If you are not envied, you are not enviable.

The cure is in the house, not brought by other hands from distant places, but by its own, in agony and blood.

They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn

There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.

For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune.

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.

Pleasantest of all ties is the tie of host and guest.

This is a sickness rooted and inherent in the nature of a tyranny: that he that holds it does not trust his friends.

Let me attain no envied wealth, let me not plunder cities, neither be taken in turn, and face life in the power of another.

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Only through suffering do we learn

A curse burns bright on crime.

The best by far is to marry in one's own rank.

Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.

Married love between man and woman is bigger than oaths guarded by right of nature.

Misfortune wandering the same track lights now upon one and now upon another.

If a man suffers ill, let it be without shame; for this is the only profit when we are dead. You will never say a good word about deeds that are evil and disgraceful.

No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind's whirling wrath.

Too few rejoice at a friend's good fortune.

Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.

When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?

that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again
and we resist.

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.

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.

For the mighty, even to give away is grace.

I warn the marauder dragging plunder, chaotic, rich beyond all rights: he'll strike his sails, harried at long last, stunned when the squalls of torment break his spars to bits.

For by the will of the gods Fate hath held sway since ancient days.

Time brings all things to pass.

For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.

For in pure maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.

They who prosper take on airs of vanity.

The future you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it.

Bethink thee of the adage, 'Call none blest, till peaceful death have crowned a life of weal.

Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.

The laws of a state change with the changing times.

Wisdom cometh by suffering.

Since long I've held silence a remedy for harm.

FURIES:
Over the beast doomed to the fire
this is the chant, scatter of wits,
frenzy and fear, hurting the heart,
song of the Furies
binding brain and blighting blood
in its stringless melody.

Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.

A world of wealth is trash if men are wanting; men who have no wealth never find fortune smiling as their strength deserves.

You'll see all other mortal sinners, the ones who flout the honor owed to gods or guests, or loving parents
you'll see them get the justice they deserve. For Hades holds men mightily to a strict accounting down below the earth; he sees all things, inscribes them within the book of his remembering.

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

We must pronounce him fortunate who has ended his life in fair prosperity.

The high strength of men knows no content with limitation.

Time in its aging course teaches all things.

May dawn, as the proverb goes, bring happy tidings coming from her mother night.

Remember to be submissive, thou art analien, a fugitive, and in need.

You have learned the lesson by experience.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

Pain both ways and what is worse?

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Only one accomplishment is beyond both the power and the mercy of the Gods. They cannot make the past as though it had never been.

Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?

Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.

Sorrow with me, Sorrowful one!
Tell me, whose voice proclaims
Things true and sad,
Naming by all their old, unhappy names,
What drove me mad

Suffering brings experience.

In the sinews of the dead there is no blood.

Here he lies like something melting away. His mother's blood comes quaking howling brassing bawling blacking down his mad little veins.

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

The evils of mortals are manifold; nowhere is trouble of the same wing seen.

The words of truth are simple.

Good fortune is a god among men, and more than a god.

There's only few people who have strength to honor someone's achievement without envy.

Do not labor uselessly at what helps not at all.

Yet again, isn't there something terrible in randomness - the idea that at the very bottom of its calculations, real depravity has no master plan of any kind, it's just a dreamy whim that slides out of people when they are trapped or bored or too lazy to analyze their own mania.