Euripides Quotes

I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses; I have been versed in the reasonings of men; but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.

Today's today. Tomorrow we may be
ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.

Dishonour will not trouble me, once I am dead.

Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.

Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.

Oh, if I had Orpheus' voice and poetry with which to move the Dark Maid and her Lord, I'd call you back, dear love, from the world below. I'd go down there for you. Charon or the grim King's dog could not prevent me then from carrying you up into the fields of light.

A second wife is hateful to the children of the first; A viper is not more hateful.

Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.

When good men die their goodness does not perish, But lives though they are gone. As for the bad, All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot; where he is, there are in the first place no laws common to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end.

For nothing is there more sweet unto an aged father than a daughter

The sweetest teaching did he introduce,
Concealing truth under untrue speech.
The place he spoke of as the gods' abode
Was that by which he might awe humans most, — The place from which, he knew, terrors came to mortals And things advantageous in their wearisome life — The revolving heaven above, in which dwell
The lightnings, and awesome claps
Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,
Beautiful and intricate by that wise craftsman Time, — From which, too, the meteor's glowing mass speeds
And wet thunderstorm pours forth upon the earth.

I think, Some shrewd man first, a man in judgment wise,
Found for mortals the fear of gods,
Thereby to frighten the wicked should they Even act or speak or scheme in secret.

Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far.

Where two discourse, if the one's anger rise, The man who lets the contest fall is wise.