The man who does ill, ill must suffer too.
The cure is in the house, not brought by other hands from distant places, but by its own, in agony and blood.
For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.
Arrogance is truly the child of impiety, but from health of soul comes happiness, dear to all, much prayed for.
Truly upon mortals cometh swift of foot their evil and his offence upon him that trespasseth against Right.
Lustre of man walking proud beneath the sky diminishes to nothing and goes unregarded.
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.
I take my cue from deeds, not words.
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.
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.
Pour everything out for the blood you have shed, you’re wasting your time in appeasing the dead.
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.
You have used me strangely.
By the sword you did your work, and by the sword you die.
We should know what is true before we break our rage.
Who acts, shall endure. So speaks the voice of the age-old wisdom.
I beg you, alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune wanders everywhere, and settles now upon one and now upon another.
Only when man’s life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man fortunate.
My heart’s a dance of fear.
When evil come on those we dearly love, never shall we betray them.