Inspirational Quotes by Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Inspirational Quotations by Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Sophocles (c.496–c.406 BCE) was a Greek tragic dramatist. He is one of the trios of major Greek tragedians, with Aeschylus and Euripides.

Sophocles was very much at the center of Athenian public life; he served as an imperial treasurer and diplomat and was elected general twice. Sophocles’s long life embraced the most crucial epoch of Athenian history—from the defeat of the foreign threats in the Persian wars, through the ensuing economic and cultural expansion, to the years of decline. He died just ahead of the final defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

Sophocles wrote 120 plays, of which seven survive, including Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes . The group known as the Theban plays—(Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) have long been influential in English literature, either directly or in adaptations by Seneca, John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Matthew Arnold, A. C. Swinburne, W. B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound.

Sophocles’s seven surviving plays are significant for their addition of a third actor to the previous two (plus the chorus.) This allowed a better complexity of plot and a much fuller depiction of the characters’ personalities.

At their essence, Sophocles’s tragedies are moral and religious dramas that pit the tragic hero against unalterable fate and the divine will of the gods. Human strength and achievement must be balanced by susceptibility to circumstance.

In his masterpiece Oedipus Rex, arguably the most influential play ever written, Oedipus is the model leader whose strengths and human fallibility set in motion the revelation that he has violated social and divine order through patricide and incest. The play dramatizes Oedipus’s heartbreaking journey toward self-understanding-exposing human nature and its implications.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sophocles

Kindness gives birth to kindness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Kindness

There is no witness so terrible-no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.
—Sophocles
Topics: Conscience

Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life
—Sophocles
Topics: Children

If you have committed iniquity, you must expect to suffer; for vengeance with its sacred light shines upon you.
—Sophocles
Topics: Vengeance

You win the victory when you yield to friends.
—Sophocles
Topics: Victory, Friendship

There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. Why bewail what is done and cannot be recalled?
—Sophocles
Topics: Forgiveness

A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.
—Sophocles
Topics: Life

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
—Sophocles
Topics: Confidence, Grief, Responsibility, Worry, Self-reliance

He who throws away a friend is as bad as he who throws away his life
—Sophocles

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
—Sophocles
Topics: Failure, Success, Honor, Character, Honesty

It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself, and no one else, has made it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Self-reliance, Confidence, Responsibility

Look and you will find it—what is unsought will go undetected.
—Sophocles
Topics: Possibilities, Potential

There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.
—Sophocles
Topics: Fortune

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
—Sophocles
Topics: Grief

Seize the hour.
—Sophocles
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management

Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.
—Sophocles
Topics: Appreciation

The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown.
—Sophocles
Topics: Knowledge

Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.
—Sophocles
Topics: Decision, Decisions

A lie never lives to be old.
—Sophocles
Topics: Lies

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.
—Sophocles
Topics: Life and Living, Happiness

Is anyone in all the world safe from unhappiness?
—Sophocles
Topics: Happiness, Unhappiness

Rather throw away that which is dearest to you, your own life, than turn away a good friend.
—Sophocles

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
—Sophocles
Topics: Speakers, Speaking

Who feels no ills, should, therefore, fear them; and when fortune smiles, be doubly cautious, lest destruction come remorseless on him, and he fall unpitied.
—Sophocles
Topics: Prosperity, Success & Failure

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him…
—Sophocles
Topics: Knowledge, Wonder

Success, remember is the reward of toil.
—Sophocles
Topics: Success & Failure, Success

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.
—Sophocles
Topics: Words

For the dead there are no more toils.
—Sophocles
Topics: Death, Dying

Success is dependent on effort.
—Sophocles
Topics: Success, Effort

Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.
—Sophocles
Topics: Happiness, Wisdom