Top 500 Sophocles Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “I say you are the murderer you hunt.”

— Sophocles

202. “The truth with all its power lives inside me.”

— Sophocles

203. “I’ve never known an honest man who can plead so well for any plea whatever.”

— Sophocles

204. “Give me a life wherever there is an opportunity to live, and better life than was my father’s.”

— Sophocles

205. “Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.”

— Sophocles

206. “Love, unconquerable, Waster of rich men, keeper Of warm lights and all-night vigil In the soft face of a girl: Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor! Even the pure immortals cannot escape you, And mortal man, in his one day’s dusk, Trembles before your glory.”

— Sophocles

207. “In his autumn before the winter comes mans last mad surge of youth.”

— Sophocles

208. “Time is the only test of honest men, one day is space enough to know a rogue.”

— Sophocles

209. “Time, which sees all things, has found you out.”

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

215. “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

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

— Sophocles

217. “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

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

220. “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

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

223. “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

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

227. “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

228. “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

229. “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

230. “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

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

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

— Sophocles

250. “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