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- There is not any armor
- In gold against perdition
- For him who spurns the high altar
- Of Justice down into the darkness.
- My fate is angry if I obey these,
- But angry if I slaughter
- This child, the beauty of my house,
- With maiden blood shed staining
- These father's hands beside the altar.
- What of these things goes now without disaster?
- How shall I fail my ships
- And lose my faith of battle?
A great ox stands on my tongue.
- Wisdom comes through suffering.
- Trouble, with its memories of pain,
- Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
- So men against their will
- Learn to practice moderation.
- Favours come to us from gods.
Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
Call no man happy till he is dead.
I well know that mirror of friendship, shadow of a shade.
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
- It is like a woman indeed
- To take rapture before the fact is shown for true.
- They believe too easily, are too quick to shift
- From ground to ground; and swift indeed
- The rumor voiced by a woman dies again.
When the black and mortal blood of man has fallen to the ground ... who then can sing spells to call it back again?
Exiles feed on hope.
- And Righteousness is a shining in
- The smoke of mean houses.
- Her blessing is on the just man.
- From high hills starred with gold by reeking hands
- She turns back
- With eyes that glance away into the simple in heart,
- Spurning the strength of gold
- Stamped with false flattery.
- And all things she steers to fulfillment.
Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.
It is always in season for old men to learn.
- The gods fail not to mark
- Those who have killed many.
- The black Furies stalking the man
- Fortunate beyond all right
- Wrench back again the set of his life
- And drop him to darkness.
Success is man’s god.
- But, as a beam balances, so
- Sudden disasters wait, to strike
- Some in the brightness, some in gloom
Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
- The gods know, and we call upon the gods; they know
- How we are spun in circles like seafarers, in
- What storms. But if we are to win, and our ship live,
- From one small seed could burgeon an enormous tree.
Dreaming is a light pastime, of fortune more golden than gold.
For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow; it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.
- The female force, the desperate
- Love crams its resisted way
- On marriage and the dark embrace
- Of brute beasts, of mortal men.
What is pleasanter than the tie of host and guest?
Time brings all things to pass.
- Of what thing can we speak, and strike more close,
- Than of the sorrows they who bore us have given...
- For we are bloody like the wolf
- And savage born from the savage mother.
For seeing they saw not, and hearing they understood not, but like shapes in a dream they wrought all the days of their lives in confusion.
Pride has always gone before a fall.
There is no disease I spit on more than treachery.
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
I judge by deeds not words.
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
Memory is the mother of all wisdom.
For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
When a match has equal partners, then I fear not.
It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.
God's mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.
Then beneath the earth those hidden blessings for man, bronze, iron, silver and gold—who can claim to have discovered before me? No one, I am sure, who wants to speak to the purpose. In one short sentence understand it all: every art of mankind comes from Prometheus.
- Hear now the sorry tale
- Of mortal man. A thing of no avail
- He was, until a living mind I wrought
- Within him, and new mastery of thought.
- I cast no blame on man; I do but crave
- To show what love was in the gifts I gave.
- I tell you, sight they had but saw in vain;
- Hearing, but heard not; as shapes wax and wane
- In dreams, aimless for ever and confused,
- They moved; no binding of the clay they used,
- No craft of wood, to build in the bright sun
- Their dwellings; but like feeble ants wind-blown,
- Hid them in crannied caves, far from the day;
- No seasons did they know, no signs to say
- When winter cold should come, nor flowery spring,
- Nor summer with his fruit, but everything
- They did was without knowledge, till their eyes
- Were oped by me to see the stars that rise,
- And them that sink to heaven's obscurer parts.
- Then Number, Number, queen of all the arts,
- I showed them, and the craft which stroke to stroke
- Added, till words came and the letters spoke;
- The all-remembering wonder, the unworn
- And edged tool, whence every Muse is born.
- Beasts of the forest and the field I broke
- To harness, made them servants to the yoke
- And carriers who might lift from man the pain
- Of extreme toil; I hanselled to the rein
- The gentle steed, and in the chariot tied
- For rich men who would glory in their pride.
- I made, none else, for mariners the free
- And flaxen-winged chariots of the sea.
- Alas, all these new wisdoms I could find
- For mortals, but no wisdom to unbind
- These mine own fetters -- nay, nor hope of it.
On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.
More Aeschylus Quotes
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