Quotes to inspire and reflect

God, these old men! How they pray for death! How heavy they find this life in the slow drag of days! And yet, when Death comes near them, You will not find one who will rise and walk with him, not one whose years are still a burden to him.

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 sweet thing, for whatever time, to revisit in dreams the dear dead we have lost.

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.

No man loves life like him that’s growing old.

A woman’s vows I write upon the wave.

No falsehood lingers on into old age.

A remedy too strong for the disease.

It made our hair stand up in panic fear.

Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light And then to go back quickly whence we came.

Athens, nurse of men.

The immortal Gods alone have neither age nor death! All other things almighty Time disquiets.

Stranger in a strange country.

The good befriend themselves.

War never slays a bad man in its course, But the good always! 9

Death is not the worst; rather, in vain To wish for death, and not to compass it.

Look upon Oedipus This is the king who solved the famous riddle [of the Sphinx]. 8

Let every man in mankind’s frailty Consider his last day; and let none Presume on his good fortune until he find Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

Time eases all things.

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be When there’s no help in truth!

The tyrant is a child of Pride Who drinks from his great sickening cup Recklessness and vanity, Until from his high crest headlong He plummets to the dust of hope. 7

Ships are only hulls, high walls are nothing, When no life moves in the empty passageways.

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Love, unconquerable, Waster of rich men, keeper Of warm lights and all-night vigil In the soft face of a girl: Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor! Even the pure immortals cannot escape you, And mortal man, in his one day’s dusk, Trembles before your glory.

The ideal condition Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; But since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil! This is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down, This is what scatters armies!

Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He’s fit for public authority.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

All that is and shall be, And all the past, is his [Zeus’s].

It is a good thing To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure To bring death to a friend.

But all your [Creon’s] strength is weakness itself against The immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were and shall be Forever, beyond man utterly.

Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none More wonderful than man.

For God hates utterly The bray of bragging tongues.

I, whom proof hath taught of late How so far only should we hate our foes As though we soon might love them, and so far Do a friend service as to one most like Someday to prove our foe, since oftenest men In friendship but a faithless haven find. 3

It is not righteousness to outrage A brave man dead, not even though you hate him.

Sleep that masters all.

For kindness begets kindness evermore, But he from whose mind fades the memory Of benefits, noble is he no more. 2

Nobly to live, or else nobly to die, Befits proud birth. 2

Silence gives the proper grace to women.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

No man was ever wise by chance.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

We may despair of knowing, we must not despair of judging.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.