The Oedipus Cycle Quotes

“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”
― Bernard Knox, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“All men make mistakes.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Of all vile things current on earth, none is so vile as money.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Sentry: King, may I speak?

Creon: Your very voice distresses me.

Sentry: Are you sure that it is my voice, and not your conscience?

Creon: By God, he wants to analyze me now!

Sentry: It is not what I say, but what has been done, that hurts you.

Creon: You talk too much.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“دانایی گریز از تنهایی است.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays

“And if my present actions strike you as foolish, let's just say I've been accused of folly by a fool.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“You are the king no doubt, but in one respect,
at least, I am your equal: the right to reply.
I claim that privilege too.
I am not your slave. I serve Apollo.
I don't need Creon to speak for me in public.

So,
you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.
You with your precious eyes,
you're blind to the corruption in your life,
to the house you live in, those you live with-
who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing
you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,
the dead below the earth and the living here above,
and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse
will whip you from this land one day, their footfall
treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding
your eyes that now can see the light!

Soon, soon,
you'll scream aloud - what haven won't reverberate?
What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo?
That day you learn the truth about your marriage,
the wedding-march that sang you into your halls,
the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor!
And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dream
will level you with yourself and all your children.

There. Now smear us with insults - Creon, myself
and every word I've said. No man will ever
be rooted from the earth as brutally as you.”
― Robert Fagles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex / Oedipus at Colonus / Antigone

“آنگاهکه خرد را سودی نیست، خردمندی دردمندی است.”
― Sophocles, The Theban Plays

“One soul is enough, I know, to pay the debt for thousands, if one will go to the gods in all good faith.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Your edict, King, was strong,
But all your strength is weakness itself against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,
Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.

I knew I must die, even without your decree:
I am only mortal. And if I must die
Now, before it is my time to die,
Surely this is no hardship: can anyone
Living, as I live, with evil all about me,
Think Death less than a friend?”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“It's little I ask, and get still less, but quite enough for me.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time who turns his back on a decent length of life, I'll show the world a man who clings to folly.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right
To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—
I hope that I shall never want to say!— that you
Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men
Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.
You are not in a position to know everything
That people say or do, or what they feel:
Your temper terrifies them—everyone
Will tell you only what you like to hear.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“You'll never find a man on Earth, if a god leads him on, who can escape his fate.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“The dead alone feel no pain.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“It's not through words but actions that I want to set the luster on my life.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Even in these straits our life is not as pitiful as you'd think, so long as we find joy in every hour.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“To a terrible place which men’s ears may not hear of, nor their eyes see it.”
― Sophocles, Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus

“By God, I'll have more booty in a moment.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“It is not in words that I should wish my life to be distinguished, but rather in things done.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Commit cruelty on a person long enough and the mind begins to go.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“...Time, sweeping through its rounds, gives birth to infinite nights and days...”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“Men are of little worth. Their brief lives last a single day. They cannot hold elusive pleasure fast; It melts away. All laurels wither; all illusions fade; Hopes have been phantoms, shade on air-built shade, since time began.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“And remember that the captor is now the captive; the hunter is in the snare. What was won by stealth will not be kept.”
― Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“just thinking of all your days to come, the bitterness,
the life that rough mankind will thrust upon you.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“so I believed—what a handsome prince you raised—
under the skin, what sickness to the core.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Good news.
I tell you even the hardest things to bear,
if they should turn out well, all would be well.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Dionysus is the life-spirit of all green vegetation—ivy, pine tree and especially the vine; he is, in Dylan Thomas’ phrase, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus