Top 500 Sophocles Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Time, which sees all things, has found you out.”

— Sophocles

202. “Opportunity is the best captain of all endeavor.”

— Sophocles

203. “Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire? O Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed.”

— Sophocles

204. “The pain we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all.”

— Sophocles

205. “There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust.”

— Sophocles

206. “We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.”

— Sophocles

207. “Yet I pity the poor wretch, though he’s my enemy. He’s yoked to an evil delusion, but the same fate could be mine. I see clearly: we who live are all phantoms, fleeing shadows.”

— Sophocles

208. “There is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.”

— Sophocles

209. “Never at my hands will the traitor be honored above the patriot. But whoever proves his loyalty to the state–I’ll prize that man in death as well as life.”

— Sophocles

210. “Goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer;.”

— Sophocles

211. “If you think my acts are foolishness; the foolishness may be in the fools eye.”

— Sophocles

212. “Now let the weeping cease; Let no one mourn again. These things are in the hands of God.”

— Sophocles

213. “I didn’t say yes. I can say no to anything I say vile, and I don’t have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards – all that your can do is to have me killed.”

— Sophocles

214. “All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.”

— Sophocles

215. “Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He’s fit for public authority.”

— Sophocles

216. “No yield to the dead! Never stab the fighter when he’s down. Where’s the glory, killing the dead twice over?”

— Sophocles

217. “Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light and then go back quickly whence we came.”

— Sophocles

218. “The ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; but since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.”

— Sophocles

219. “In flood time you can see how some trees bend, and because they bend, even their twigs are safe, while stubborn trees are torn up, roots and all. And the same thing happens in sailing: make your sheet fast, never slacken, – and over you go.”

— Sophocles

220. “Men of perverse opinion do not know the excellence of what is in their hands, till someone dash it from them.”

— Sophocles

221. “Dreadful is the mysterious power of fate; there is no deliverance from it by wealth or by war, by walled city or dark, seabeaten ships.”

— Sophocles

222. “Do I not live? Badly, I know, but I live.”

— Sophocles

223. “I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare – I have no use for him either.”

— Sophocles

224. “War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.”

— Sophocles

225. “If you were to offer a thirsty man all wisdom, you would not please him more than if you gave him a drink.”

— Sophocles

226. “You’re in love with impossibility.”

— Sophocles

227. “All my care is you, and all my pleasure yours.”

— Sophocles

228. “Desire looks clear from the eyes of a lovely bride: power as strong as the founded world.”

— Sophocles

229. “Yes it will be a grace if I die. To exist is pain. Life is no desire of mine anymore.”

— Sophocles

230. “What a splendid king you’d make of a desert island – you and you alone.”

— Sophocles

231. “In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace.”

— Sophocles

232. “It’s terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.”

— Sophocles

233. “A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.”

— Sophocles

234. “I am free! for I have in me the strength of truth.”

— Sophocles

235. “What an ugly, loveless life for a girl.”

— Sophocles

236. “What is God singing in his profound Delphi of gold and shadow?”

— Sophocles

237. “How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!”

— Sophocles

238. “It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.”

— Sophocles

239. “No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see those ye should ne’er have seen; now blind to those whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.”

— Sophocles

240. “The truth is what I cherish and that’s my strength.”

— Sophocles

241. “When people fall in deep distress, their native sense departs.”

— Sophocles

242. “What fate can be worse than to know we have no one but ourselves to blame for our misfortunes!”

— Sophocles

243. “For most men friendship is a faithless harbor.”

— Sophocles

244. “All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.”

— Sophocles

245. “It’s no city at all, owned by one man alone.”

— Sophocles

246. “The eyes of men love to pluck the blossoms from the faded flowers they turn away.”

— Sophocles

247. “Do not fear for me. Make straight your own path to destiny.”

— Sophocles

248. “You clearly hate to yield, but you will regret it when your anger has passed. Such natures are justly the hardest for themselves to bear.”

— Sophocles

249. “Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.”

— Sophocles

250. “Of no mortal say, ‘That man is happy,’ till vexed by no grievous ill he pass Life’s goal.”

— Sophocles