Top 50 Sappho Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What cannot be said will be wept.”

— Sappho

2. “Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.”

— Sappho

3. “Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak Love shakes my heart.”

— Sappho

4. “You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us.”

— Sappho

5. “May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.”

— Sappho

6. “From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious.”

— Sappho

7. “Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.”

— Sappho

8. “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.”

— Sappho

9. “I will let my body flow like water over the gentle cushions.”

— Sappho

10. “Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done.”

— Sappho

11. “No honey for me, if it comes with a bee.”

— Sappho

12. “I would not think to touch the sky with two arms.”

— Sappho

13. “Love shook my heart Like the wind on the mountain rushing over the oak trees.”

— Sappho

14. “There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.”

— Sappho

15. “Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks.”

— Sappho

16. “The evening star Is the most beautiful of all stars.”

— Sappho

17. “Now the Earth with many flowers puts on her spring embroidery.”

— Sappho

18. “Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.”

— Sappho

19. “Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak, falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough.”

— Sappho

20. “Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.”

— Sappho

21. “All the while, believe me, I prayed our night would last twice as long.”

— Sappho

22. “Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear.”

— Sappho

23. “When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking idly.”

— Sappho

24. “Whatever one loves most is beautiful.”

— Sappho

25. “With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down.”

— Sappho

26. “When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me and a trembling seizes me all over.”

— Sappho

27. “Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die.”

— Sappho

28. “I took my lyre and said: come now, my heavenly tortoise shell: become a speaking instrument.”

— Sappho

29. “As sometimes at sunset the rosyfingered moon surpasses all the stars. And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields.”

— Sappho

30. “Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.”

— Sappho

31. “I know not what to do, my mind is divided.”

— Sappho

32. “I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kle.”

— Sappho

33. “I am weary of all your words and soft, strange ways.”

— Sappho

34. “He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.”

— Sappho

35. “Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees.”

— Sappho

36. “I use to weave crowns.”

— Sappho

37. “Someone will remember us, even in another time.”

— Sappho

38. “The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.”

— Sappho

39. “Stand and face me, my love, and scatter the grace in your eyes.”

— Sappho

40. “Love – bittersweet, irrepressible – loosens my limbs and I tremble.”

— Sappho

41. “In the crooks of your body, I find my religon.”

— Sappho

42. “For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see but the good man will at once also beautiful be.”

— Sappho

43. “Wealth without virtue is no harmless neighbor.”

— Sappho

44. “And with precious and royal perfume you anointed yourself.”

— Sappho

45. “How love the limb-loosener sweeps me away.”

— Sappho

46. “Hesperus bringing together All that the morning star scattered.”

— Sappho

47. “For me, neither the honey nor the bee.”

— Sappho

48. “Death must be an evil and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever?”

— Sappho

49. “In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making.”

— Sappho

50. “Builders, raise the ceiling high, Raise the dome into the sky, Hear the wedding song! For the happy groom is near, Tall as Mars, and statelier, Hear the wedding song!”

— Sappho