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“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
― Euripides

“He is life's liberating force.
He is release of limbs and communion through dance.
He is laughter, and music in flutes.
He is repose from all cares -- he is sleep!
When his blood bursts from the grape
and flows across tables laid in his honor
to fuse with our blood,
he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows
of ivy-cool sleep.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell;
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Come, God --
Bromius, Bacchus, Dionysus --
burst into life, burst
into being, be a mighty bull,
a hundred-headed snake,
a fire-breathing lion.
Burst into smiling life, oh Bacchus!”
― Euripides, The Bacchae