Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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.

Born in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens,) Sophocles was the son of a wealthy merchant and enjoyed all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. Sophocles was provided with the best traditional aristocratic education. He studied all of the arts and 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

Better to die, and sleep
The never-waking sleep, than linger on
And dare to live when the soul’s life is gone.
—Sophocles
Topics: Suicide

I well believe it, to unwilling ears;None love the messenger who brings bad news.
—Sophocles
Topics: News

Everything is ideal to its parent.
—Sophocles
Topics: Family

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

To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.
—Sophocles
Topics: Silence

There is no success without hardship.
—Sophocles
Topics: Success

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

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.
—Sophocles
Topics: Reason

Chance never helps those who do not help themselves.
—Sophocles
Topics: Fortune, Independence, Luck, Chance, Self-reliance

There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
—Sophocles

Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to
—Sophocles
Topics: Death

Opportunity is the best captain of all endeavor.
—Sophocles
Topics: Opportunities

What you cannot enforce, do not command.
—Sophocles
Topics: Power, Leaders, Leadership

Men of ill judgment often ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Judges, Judging, Judgment, Judgement

To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away.
—Sophocles
Topics: Friendship

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

All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wishes

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

In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace.
—Sophocles

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

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

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wisdom

Opportunity has power over all things.
—Sophocles
Topics: Opportunities

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wisdom

Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.
—Sophocles

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

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

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

Truth is always the strongest argument.
—Sophocles
Topics: Truth

Kindness gives birth to kindness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Kindness

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