The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.
Ares ever loves to pluck all the fairest flower of an armed host.
In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain.
Nought is there in wealth That serves as bulwark ’gainst the subtle stealth Of Destiny and Doom.
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?
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
But still the block of Vengeance firm doth stand, and Fate, as swordsmith, hammers blow on blow.
This is the law: blood spilt upon the ground cries out for more.
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.
Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.
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.
Take courage; pain’s extremity soon ends.
I have been schooled by my own suffering: I’ve learned the many ways of being purged.
You shall learn, though late, the lesson of how to be discreet.
Art is far feebler than necessity.
Report uttered by the people is everywhere of great power.
The will was of Zeus, the hand of Hephaestus.
For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow: it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.
The saying goes that the gods leave a town once it is captured.
For a single path leads to the house of Hades.