Sophocles

Sophocles (495 BC - 406 BC) was a Greek dramatic and tragic poet, born at Colonos, a suburb of Athens. He is considered as one of the three greatest dramatists of classical antiquity along with the two others — Aeschylus and Euripides. He was a musical talent, and when only 16 years of age, he was selected to lead the choir that sang the song of triumph over the victory of Salamis. His first appearance as a dramatist was in 488 BC, when he had Aeschylus as his rival and won the prize, though he was, seven years afterwards, defeated by Euripides, but retrieved the defeat the year following by the production of his "Antigone." That same year one of the 10 strategi (or generals) and he accompanied Pericles in his war against the aristocrats of Samos.

He wrote a number of dramas, over 100 it is said, but only 7 survive, and these in probable order are "Ajax," "Antigone," "Electra," "Oedipus Tyrannus," "Trachineæ," "Oedipus Coloneus," and "Philoctetes." Obviously, all his subjects were drawn from Greek legends, and they are all alike remarkable for the intense humanity and sublime passion that inspires them and the humane and the high and holy resolves they stir up.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Nobody loves life like him who is growing old.

- Acrisius

• Nobody likes the bringer of bad news.

- Antigone

• Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

- Antigone

• The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

- Oedipus Rex

• Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.

- Antigone

• There are times when even justice brings harm with it.

- Electra

• If they are just, they are better than clever.

- Philoctetes

• One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it. You have no certainty until you try.

- Trachiniae

• One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.

- Oedipus at Colonus

• For money you would sell your soul.

- Antigone

• There is nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

- Antigone

• Reason is god's crowning gift to man.

-Antigone

• I have been a stranger in a strange land.

- Oedipus at Colonus.

• Time eases all things.

- Oedipus Rex

• Gentle time will heal our sorrows.

- Electra

• A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.
• How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth.

- Oedipus Rex.

• Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

- Antigone

• By now you will have discovered that women, too, can be militant.

- Electra

• Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.

- Antigone

• Kindness gives birth to kindness.
• Heaven ne’er helps the men who will not act.
• If you have done terrible things, you must endure terrible things; for thus the sacred light of injustice shines bright.
• Ignorant men

Don’t know what good they hold in their hands until
They’ve flung it away.

• But hard it is to learn

The mind of any mortal or the heart,
Till he be tried in chief authority.
Power shows the man.

• But love of gain has often lured a man to his destruction.
• Then, do not have one mind, and one alone

that only your opinion can be right.
Whoever thinks that he alone is wise,
his eloquence, his mind, above the rest,
come the unfolding, shows his emptiness.

• Strange are the ways of Fate, her power

Nor wealth, nor arms withstand, nor tower;
Nor brass-prowed ships, that breast the sea
From Fate can flee.

• O my son!

These are no trifles! Think: all men make mistakes,
But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong,
And repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

• All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.
• Wisdom is first of the gifts of good fortune:

'Tis a duty, to be sure, the rites of the Gods
Duly to honor: but words without measure, the
Fruit of vain-glory, in woes without number their
Recompense finding,
Have lesson'd the agéd in wisdom.

• Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.
• Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.
• The truth is always the strongest argument.
• If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.

Empedocles