Quotes By Sophocles

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.

Better not to exist than live basely.

It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.

There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.

Isn't it the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?

Not even old age knows how to love death.

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.

For the dead there are no more toils.

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.

Reason is God's crowning gift to man.

Old age and the passage of time teach all things.

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.

A lie never lives to be old.

Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.

Every man can see things far off but is blind to what is near.

Whoever lives among many evils just as I, how can dying not be a source of gain?

To him who is in fear everything rustles.

Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.

To give birth is a fearsome thing; there is no hating the child one has borne even when injured by it.

I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.

No enemy is worse than bad advice.

I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.

The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.

Men may know many things by seeing; but no prophet can see before the event, nor what end waits for him.

If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.

Silence is an ornament for women.