Aeschylus Quotes

The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite.

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

The air is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven, Zeus all that is, and what transcends them all.

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.

I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.

By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water.

Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy.

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Wrong must not win by technicalities.

Married love between man and woman is bigger than oaths guarded by right of nature.

ATHENA: You wish to be called righteous rather than act right. [...] I say, wrong must not win by technicalities.

My will is mine...I shall not make it soft for you.

God's most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

Call no man happy till he is dead.

Base men who prosper are unenviable.

From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.

For know that no one is free, except Zeus.

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

Only through suffering do we learn

Justice, voiceless, unseen, seeth thee when thou sleepest and when thou goest forth and when thou liest down. Continually doth she attend thee, now aslant thy course, now at a later time. These lines are from a section of doubtful or spurious fragments.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

Wisdom comes through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, So men against their will Learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods.

For the lips of Zeus do not know how to lie, but bring to fulfilment every word.

God always strives together with those who strive.

The man who boldly transgresses, amassing a great heap unjustly--by force, in time, he will strike his sail, when trouble seizes him as the yardarm is splintered. He calls on those who hear nothing and he struggles in the midst of the whirling waters. The god laughs at the hot-headed man, seeing him, who boasted that this would never happen, exhausted by distress without remedy and unable to surmount the cresting wave. He wrecks the happiness of his earlier life on the reef of Justice, and he perishes unwept, unseen.

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

It is best for the wise man not to seem wise.

The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter's gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom.

Do not kick against the pricks.

God loves to help him who strives to help himself.

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls.

When a man's willing and eager the god's join in.

Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.

The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.

But when once the earth has sucked up a dead man's blood, there is no way to raise him up.

So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft: With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.

Whoever is just willingly and without compulsion will not lack happiness; he will never be utterly destroyed.

There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.

Neither a life of anarchy nor a life under a despot should you praise. To all that lies in the middle has a god given excellence.

The act of evil breeds others to follow, young sins in its own likeness.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another's happiness.

For this our task hath Fate spun without fail to last for ever sure, that we on man weighed down with deeds of hate should follow till the earth his life immure. Nor when he dies can he boast of being truly free.