Book of Quotes

Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

- "To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away"

- "I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect."

- "Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day."

- "Time, which sees all things, has found you out."

- "How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be

When there's no help in truth."

- "Alas, how terrible is wisdom

when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!

This I knew well, but had forgotten it,

else I would not have come here."

- "The truth is what I cherish and that's my strength"

- "The tyrant is a child of Pride

Who drinks from his sickening cup

Recklessness and vanity,

Until from his high crest headlong

He plummets to the dust of hope."

- "Oblivion - what a blessing...for the mind to dwell a world away from pain."

- "All my care is you, and all my pleasure yours."

- "In time you will know this well: For time, and time alone, will show the just man, though scoundrels are discovered in a day. "

- "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."

- "How terrible-- to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!"

- "...count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last."

- "Whatever is sought for can be caught, you know, whatever is neglected slips away."

- "Those who jump to conclusions may go wrong."

- "They are dying, the old oracles sent to Laius, now our masters strike them off the rolls. Nowhere Apollo's golden glory now -- the gods, the gods go down."

- "It's perfect justice: natures like yours are hardest on themselves."

- "Never honor the gods in one breath and take the gods for fools the next."

- "The pain we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all."

- "And if you find I've lied, from this day on call the prophet blind."

- "Give me a life wherever there is an opportunity to live, and better life than was my father's."

- "A sight to touch e'en hatred's self with pity."

- "Weep not, everything must have its day."

- "(...) I, for one, prize less

The name of king than deeds of kingly power;

And so would all who learn in wisdom's school."

- "What is God singing in his profound Delphi of gold and shadow?"

- "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well."

- "King as thou art, free speech at least is mine. To make reply; in this I am thy peer."

- "In matters where I have no cognizance

I hold my tongue."

- "Long, long ago; her thought was of that child

By him begot, the son by whom the sire

Was murdered and the mother left to breed

With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.

Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon

Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,

Husband by husband, children by her child."

- "For time alone shews a man's honesty,

But in one day you may discern his guilt."

- "Thou lov'st to speak in riddles and dark words."

- "Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire? O Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed."

- "The pains we inflict upon ourselves hurt most most of all."