أما الدول الخاملة التي تتبع سياسات غامضة وحذرة فإن حذرها يغشي بصيرتها. - Euripides

CRE. Now indeed cease from your grief, for it is time to think of the sepulture. But hear these words, O Œdipus; Eteocles, thy son, hath given to me the dominion of this land, giving them as a marriage portion to Hæmon, and with them the bed of thy daughter Antigone. I therefore will not suffer thee any longer to dwell in this land. For clearly did Tiresias say, that never, whilst thou dost inhabit this land, will the state be prosperous. But depart; and this I say not from insolence, nor being thine enemy, but on account of thy evil genius, fearing lest the country suffer any harm.

We gain the most hateful things at the hand of those dearest.

It is deplorable, Agamemnon, that men's words should ever seem to speak more loudly than their deeds. Good deeds alone should make the doer eloquent, and bad deeds dress themselves in rotten arguments, not gloze their foulness with fair colours. There are men who make this practice a fine art. Their cleverness, so-called, cannot last long; they all, without exception, come to a bad end.