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
You win the victory when you yield to friends.
—Sophocles
Topics: Victory, 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
The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
—Sophocles
Topics: Responsibility, Confidence, Self-reliance, Grief, Worry
Woman, to women silence is the best ornament.
—Sophocles
Topics: Silence
Much wisdom often goes with fewer words.
—Sophocles
Topics: Journeys, Wisdom
To be doing good deeds is man’s most glorious task.
—Sophocles
Topics: Good Deeds, Goodness, Deeds
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
When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.
—Sophocles
Topics: Happiness
It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.
—Sophocles
Topics: Goodness
All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wishes
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love.
—Sophocles
Topics: Pain, Love, Romance
There is no witness so terrible-no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.
—Sophocles
Topics: Conscience
Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wisdom, Happiness
Heaven ne’er helps the man who will not act.
—Sophocles
Topics: Heaven, Act, Prayer, Acting, Action
Look and you will find it—what is unsought will go undetected.
—Sophocles
Topics: Possibilities, Potential
To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.
—Sophocles
Topics: Silence
All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Being Ourselves
I well believe it, to unwilling ears;None love the messenger who brings bad news.
—Sophocles
Topics: News
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wit
There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.
—Sophocles
Topics: Fortune
To him who is in fear, everything rustles.
—Sophocles
Topics: Fear, One liners
Men of ill judgment often ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Judges, Judgement, Judgment, Judging
The dice of Zeus always fall luckily.
—Sophocles
Topics: Gambling
Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life
—Sophocles
Topics: Children
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.
—Sophocles
Topics: Cheating, Failures, Failure, Mistakes
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
—Sophocles
Topics: Character, Success, Honor, Failure, Honesty
A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.
—Sophocles
In a just cause the weak will beat the strong.
—Sophocles
Topics: Purpose
It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
—Sophocles
Topics: Speaking, Speakers
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wisdom
A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.
—Sophocles
Topics: Life
If you are out of trouble, watch for danger
—Sophocles
Topics: Trouble
There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.
—Sophocles
Topics: Conscience
To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away.
—Sophocles
Topics: Friendship
Why should a man fear since chance is all in all for him, and he can clearly fore-know nothing’? Best to lightly live as one can, unthinking.
—Sophocles
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
He who throws away a friend is as bad as he who throws away his life
—Sophocles
Opportunity is the best captain of all endeavor.
—Sophocles
Topics: Opportunities
Kindness gives birth to kindness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Kindness
There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
—Sophocles
But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.
—Sophocles
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