Inspirational Quotes by Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Euripides (480–406 BCE) was an Athenian tragic playwright who wrote 92 plays, 18 of which have survived. This corpus is the largest number of surviving plays among the great Athenian playwrights, including Aeschylus and Sophocles. Euripides’s tragedies like Medea, The Bacchae, and Alcestis were immensely influential on generations of playwrights and remain popular to this day.

Euripides was born probably near Athens. Not much is known about his early life except that when he was twenty, he started submitting his tragedies to theater contests. Euripides was an iconoclast in his life and his literary work. He is the archetype for the estranged artist. He played no role in public life and wrote in isolation in a 10-chambered cave, which was rediscovered by archaeologists in 1997. Aside from his writings, his chief interests were philosophy and science.

Euripides was also innovative in the way he expanded the range of drama. His plays depict subjects and perspectives never represented before on stage. For instance, The Troades shows war for its casualties, Trojan Women, not its warriors. In his best-known tragedy, Medea (431 BCE,) a princess murders her sons to even the score on the husband who left her to marry another princess.

At a time when other playwrights focused on more powerful, triumphant characters, Euripides exposed the gods as small-minded and indifferent. He portrayed mythical heroes like regular people—with their human struggles and emotional conflicts. He also represented the downtrodden in society, particularly women and slaves. His discourses were less structured and resembled normal speech.

Euripides was exiled to Macedonia for some unknown reason. His vast popularity came only after his death, when, since the fourth century, his plays outshone those of the other great Athenian playwrights. In more recent times he has influenced English and German drama, and most conspicuously such French dramatists as Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Euripides

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.
—Euripides
Topics: Character, Wealth

Silence is an answer to a wise man.
—Euripides
Topics: Silence

Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.
—Euripides
Topics: Prudence, Chance

The best prophet is common sense, our native wit.
—Euripides
Topics: Common Sense

Unblessed is the son who does not honor his parents; but if reverent and obedient to them, he will receive the same from his own children.
—Euripides
Topics: Parents

Where there is no wine there is no love.
—Euripides
Topics: One liners, Wine

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
—Euripides
Topics: Solitude

That man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.
—Euripides
Topics: Happiness, Value of Time, Time Management

Authority is never without hate.
—Euripides
Topics: One liners, Control, Hate, Authority

It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
—Euripides
Topics: Friendship

We know the good, we apprehend it clearly, but we can’t bring it to achievement.
—Euripides
Topics: Accomplishment

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
—Euripides
Topics: Friendship

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
—Euripides
Topics: Time

Pray the Gods do not envy your happiness.
—Euripides
Topics: Opportunities, Reality

The man who glories in his luck may be overthrown by destiny.
—Euripides
Topics: Fortune, Luck

There is as much confusion in the world of the gods as in ours.
—Euripides
Topics: Opportunities, Reality

When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury-like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will.
—Euripides

Slight not what’s near through aiming at what’s far.
—Euripides
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings, Live-now, Goals

What can we take on trust
in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride – nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
—Euripides
Topics: Security, Safety, Change

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.
—Euripides
Topics: Difficulty

Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends.
—Euripides
Topics: Friendship

Noble fathers have noble children.
—Euripides
Topics: Family, Fathers, Father

Some wisdom you must learn from one who’s wise.
—Euripides
Topics: Influence, Leadership

For a silence and a chaste reserve is genuine praise, and to remain quiet within the house.
—Euripides
Topics: Woman

It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides
Topics: Gift

Try first thyself, and after call in God, for to the worker God himself lends aid.
—Euripides
Topics: God

What we look for does not come to pass;
God finds a way for what none foresaw.
—Euripides
Topics: Foresight

Often a noble face hides filthy ways.
—Euripides
Topics: Hypocrisy

Tragedy isn’t getting something or failing to get it, it’s losing something you already have.
—Euripides

There is just one life for each of us: our own.
—Euripides
Topics: Appropriateness, Aptness

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Inspirational Quotes by Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

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