Top 500 Euripides Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, A stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite, One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends; For the lives of such persons are most remembered.”

— Euripides

252. “Terrible is the force of the waves of sea, terrible is the rush of the river and the blasts of hot fire, and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a terrible evil as woman.”

— Euripides

253. “What greater sorrow than being forced to leave behind my native earth?”

— Euripides

254. “The gods have sent medicines for the venom of serpents, but there is no medicine for a bad woman. She is more noxious than the viper, or than fire itself.”

— Euripides

255. “Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be the friend of every man.”

— Euripides

256. “It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved.”

— Euripides

257. “If I could remake the world, I’d banish women, send them away with all their trouble. Then children would come from a purer source.”

— Euripides

258. “Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead.”

— Euripides

259. “To the ignorant, even the words of wise seem foolishness.”

— Euripides

260. “There is nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck.”

— Euripides

261. “What greater pain could mortals have than this: To see their children dead before their eyes?”

— Euripides

262. “Remember this! No amount of Bacchic reveling can corrupt an honest woman.”

— Euripides

263. “Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.”

— Euripides

264. “Blood streams in sacrifice; yet anguish finds no cure.”

— Euripides

265. “Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.”

— Euripides

266. “Many a maiden, With white feet dancing light as air, Made happy music through the gloom.”

— Euripides

267. “There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.”

— Euripides

268. “I am nothing but words, just a shape of dreams or night.”

— Euripides

269. “Mortal fate is hard. You’d best get used to it.”

— Euripides

270. “Fate finds for every man; his share of misery.”

— Euripides

271. “Rightness of judgment is bitterness to the heart.”

— Euripides

272. “Women’s love is for their men, not for their children.”

— Euripides

273. “It’s folly that women measure their happiness with the pleasures of the bed, but they do. And when the pleasure cools or their man goes missing, all they once lived for turns dark and hateful.”

— Euripides

274. “O what will she do, a soul bitten into with wrong?”

— Euripides

275. “Human excellence means nothing Unless it works with the consent of God.”

— Euripides

276. “High honors are sweet To a man’s heart, but ever They stand close to the brink of grief.”

— Euripides

277. “The variety of all things forms a pleasure.”

— Euripides

278. “When good men die their goodness does not perish.”

— Euripides

279. “In childbirth grief begins.”

— Euripides

280. “I’d three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once.”

— Euripides

281. “Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.”

— Euripides

282. “We are not subject to our own wills, our own desires. But to the fates and the fortunes that the gods hand to us. The future is turned before our eyes into wrenching heartache, into ashes and to splinters. From today I know that truly hope is dead. I ask you again, you who watch, how can there ever be any ending than this? First silence. Then darkness.”

— Euripides

283. “It is a strange form of anger, difficult to cure, when two friends turn upon each other in hatred.”

— Euripides

284. “I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.”

— Euripides

285. “Happy is it to place a daughter; yet it pains a father’s heart when he delivers to another’s house a child, the object of his tender care.”

— Euripides

286. “O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!”

— Euripides

287. “To have found you is a dear happiness; and to be Apollo’s son is beyond all my hopes; but there is something I want to say to you alone. Come; this is a private matter between us two – anything you tell me shall be as secret as the grave.”

— Euripides

288. “Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.”

— Euripides

289. “Silence and chaste reserve is woman’s genuine praise, and to remain quiet within the house.”

— Euripides

290. “The life of men is painful.”

— Euripides

291. “Gone is the trust to be placed in oaths; I cannot understand if the gods you swore by then no longer rule, or men live by new standards of what is right.”

— Euripides

292. “Delusive hope still points to distant good.”

— Euripides

293. “When cheated, wife or husband feels the same.”

— Euripides

294. “Who then will dare to say I’m weak or timid? No, they’ll say I’m loyal as a friend, ruthless as a foe, so much like a hero destined for glory.”

— Euripides

295. “My hands are clean, but my heart has somewhat of impurity.”

— Euripides

296. “Surely again, to heal men’s wounds by music’s spell.”

— Euripides

297. “What is god, what is not god, what is between man and god, who shall say?”

— Euripides

298. “I have pondered on the causes of a life’s shipwreck. I think that our lives are worse than the mind’s quality would warrant. There are many who know virtue. We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can’t bring it to achievement.”

— Euripides

299. “If your life at night is good, you think you have Everything; but, if in that quarter things go wrong, You will consider your best and truest interests Most hateful.”

— Euripides

300. “The God knows when to smile.”

— Euripides