Top 50 Sappho Quotes (2024 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. “Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done.”

— Sappho

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

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

28. “Whatever one loves most is beautiful.”

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

32. “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

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

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

— Sappho

46. “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

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

— Sappho

48. “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

49. “Dawn with arms of roses.”

— Sappho

50. “The moon has set In a bank of jet That fringes the Western sky, The pleiads seven Have sunk from heaven And the midnight hurries by; My hopes are flown And, alas! alone On my weary couch I lie.”

— Sappho