Greek Tragedy Quotes

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”
― Euripides, Medea

“I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once.”
― Euripides, Medea

“[A]s Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions.”
― Maryrose Wood, The Hidden Gallery

“I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“It's human; we all put self interest first.”
― Euripides, Medea

“Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.”
― Euripides, Medea

“PROMETHEUS: 'Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers”
― Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

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

“ORESTES: Never shall I see you again.

ELECTRA: Nor I see myself in your eyes.

ORESTES: This, the last time I'll talk with you ever.

ELECTRA: O my homeland, goodbye. Goodbye to you, women of home.

ORESTES: Most loyal of sisters, do you leave now?

ELECTRA: I leave with tears blurring all that I see.”
― Euripides, Electra

“Not from Hades' black and universal lake can you lift him. Not by groaning, not by prayers. Yet you run yourself out in a grief with no cure, no time-limit, no measure. It is a knot no one can untie. Why are you so in love with things unbearable?”
― Sophocles, Electra

“You don't know what your life is, nor what you're doing, nor who you are.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“Yes, blood for blood, his bitter loan came due. He paid with death.”
― Euripides, Electra

“In childbirth grief begins.”
― Euripides, Medea

“I am Cassandra—she who, without asking,
understood it all and still came to her fate,
I, Cassandra, full of visions,
who sees her own death without turning away,
and hears in the night the day that follows.”
― Gabriela Mistral, Madwomen: Poems of Gabriela Mistral

“By dread things I am compelled. I know that. I see the trap closing. I know what I am. But while life is in me I will not stop this violence. No. Oh my friends who is there to comfort me? Who understands? Leave me be, let me go, do not soothe me. This is a knot no one can untie. There will be no rest, there is no retrieval. No number exists for griefs like these.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“He loves power. A terrible love.”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“No mortal ever knows happiness and good fortune all the way to the end. Each one is born with his bitterness waiting for him.”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“Of most dreadful suffering, I am the cause.”
― Euripides, Electra

“I wish you joy. To spend life's fleeting days mid joy that never meets an evil hour is to be blessed beyond compare.”
― Euripides, Electra

“You gave birth to your own death.”
― Euripides, Electra

“Because she—you hear her—she's calling,
and is always going to call, and it's better
both of us die by the dagger without anyone
seeing us, Orestes, and die a fit death.”
― Gabriela Mistral, Madwomen: Poems of Gabriela Mistral

“We'll buy back our own harm with what is most dear to us.”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“What greater sorrow than being forced to leave behind my native earth?”
― Euripides, Electra

“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods?”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“We would have to think the gods had no minds, to pray for murderers.”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“Be happy, beloved face of my great friend. For us that is impossible, but you can be-we dead lack any source of delight”
― Euripides, Orestes

“If only the herdsman had not brought him up with the flocks, not reared him, Paris, Alexander, to watch his flock by the clear springs where the nymphs rise, and the rich pastures starred with roses and hyacinths for the goddesses to gather.”
― Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“Again, again your mind has changed course with the wind. For you think now of godly things ignored when you worked dreadful deeds on your brother against his will.”
― Euripides, Electra

“Bear witness for one who is loved and not loved: we cast the cloak gently around her, an end of great woe for our house.”
― Euripides, Electra

“Apollo, your voice hymned a justice I could not see clear, but all too clear the anguish you caused, the bloodhaunted, homeless future you've doled out.”
― Euripides, Electra