Aeschylus Quotes

No man can go through life
and reach the end unharmed.
Aye, trouble is now,
and trouble still to come.

Man must suffer to be wise.
Head-winds heavy with past iol
Stray his course and cooud his heart;
Sorrow takes the blind soul's part — Man grows wise against his will.
For powers who rule from thrones above
By ruthlessness commend their love.

Look - can't you see? The more you kick
against the pricks, the more you suffer.

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

Here I am. Look no furter. No one loves you more than I.

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 what to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
Truth comes with pain.

[. . .] radiant dreams are passing in the night,
the memories throb with sorrow, joy with pain . . .
it is pain to dream and see desires
slip through the arms,
a vision lost for ever
winging down the moving drifts of sleep.

Voluptuous promises,
Crystalline logic,
Caressing assurances
Lead him, the slave
Of his own destruction.

Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.

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.

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.

Give me an answer which is plain to understand.

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

I will speak in defense of reason: for the very child of vanity is violence.

Zeus, whose will has marked for man
The sole way where wisdom lies;
Ordered one eternal plan:
Man must suffer to be wise.
Head-winds heavy with past ill
Stray his course and cloud his heart:
Sorrow takes the blind soul's part -
Man grows wise against his will.
For powers who rule from thrones above
By ruthlessness commend their love.