Electra Quotes

“Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.”
― Sophocles, Electra

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

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

“For Time calls only once, and that determines all.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Orestes: How could you recognize me after all these years?
Elektra: What a stupid question. I was born knowing you.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“I am at the end. I exist no more.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“ORESTES: Just to see the outline of your suffering

ELECTRA: Yet this is only a fraction of it you see.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“There is a kind of excellence in me and you—born in us—and it cannot live in shame.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“You're dreaming, girl, lost in a moving dream.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“What an ugly, loveless life for a girl.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“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

“Shame I do feel. And I know there is something all wrong about me—believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Think again, Electra. Don't say anymore. Don't you see what you're doing? You make your own pain. Why keep wounding yourself? With so much evil stored up in that cold dark soul of yours you breed enemies everywhere you touch.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“I will not live by rules like those.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“ELECTRA: Oh but my love—now that you have travelled back down all those years to meet my heart, over all this grief of mine, do not oh love—

ORESTES: What are you asking?

ELECTRA: Do not turn your face from me. Don't take yourself away.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“All my love gone for nothing. Days of my love, years of my love.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“This is Electra. Brilliant no more.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Oh my love take me there. Let me dwell where you are. I am already nothing, I am already burning. Oh my love, I was once part of you—take me too!”
― Sophocles, Electra

“You are a woman marked for sorrow.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Yes I know sorrow. Know it far too well. My life is a tunnel choked by the sweepings of dread.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Orestes beloved. as you die you destroy me. You have torn away the part of my mind where hope was .”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Oh love, you break on me like light!”
― Sophokles, Elektra

“I live in a place of tears.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“Electra, grieving for death, for her father, as a nightingale grieving always.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“But when a god sends harm, no man can sidestep it, no matter how strong he may be.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadow.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“You are nothing at all. Just a crack where the light slipped through.”
― Sophocles, Electra

“None but a fool or an infant could forget a father gone so far and cold. No. Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around my mind—like the bird who calls Itys! Itys! endlessly, bird of grief, angel of Zeus. O heartdragging Niobe, I count you a god: buried in rock yet always you weep.”
― Sophocles, Electra