Top 140 Sophocles Quotes
“I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.”
― Sophocles
“Old age and the passage of time teach all things.”
― Sophocles
“A human being is only breath and shadow.”
― Sophocles
“A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.”
― Sophocles
“Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.”
― Sophocles
“Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure.”
― Sophocles
“Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.”
― Sophocles
“One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.”
― Sophocles
“Bear up, my child, bear up; Zeus who oversees and directs all things is still mighty in heaven.”
― Sophocles
“Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.”
― Sophocles
“There is no success without hardship.”
― Sophocles
“Isn’t it the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?”
― Sophocles
“Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.”
― Sophocles
“Always desire to learn something useful.”
― Sophocles
“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”
― Sophocles
“There is no greater evil than anarchy.”
― Sophocles
“The dice of Zeus always fall luckily.”
― Sophocles
“To be doing good deeds is man’s most glorious task.”
― Sophocles
“You win the victory when you yield to friends.”
― Sophocles
“No treaty is ever an impediment to a cheat.”
― Sophocles
“There is nothing more hateful than bad advice.”
― Sophocles
“If you were to offer a thirsty man all wisdom, you would not please him more than if you gave him a drink.”
― Sophocles
“God’s dice always have a lucky roll.”
― Sophocles
“There is some pleasure even in words, when they bring forgetfulness of present miseries.”
― Sophocles
“No one longs to live more than someone growing old.”
― Sophocles
“Despair often breeds disease.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.”
― Sophocles
“Without labor nothing prospers.”
― Sophocles
“Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.”
― Sophocles
“Who seeks shall find.”
― Sophocles
“Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds.”
― Sophocles
“Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.”
― Sophocles
“Every man can see things far off but is blind to what is near.”
― Sophocles
“There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.”
― Sophocles
“Success is dependent on effort.”
― Sophocles
“I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.”
― Sophocles
“If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.’”
― Sophocles
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.”
― Sophocles
“Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.”
― Sophocles
“A man growing old becomes a child again.”
― Sophocles
“Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.”
― Sophocles
“All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.”
― Sophocles
“Silence is an ornament for women.”
― Sophocles
“It is the task of a good man to help those in misfortune.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever gets up and comes to grips with Love like a boxer is a fool.”
― Sophocles
“When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.”
― Sophocles
“Time alone reveals the just man; but you might discern a bad man in a single day.”
― Sophocles
“There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. Why bewail what is done and cannot be recalled?”
― Sophocles
“A wise man does not chatter with one whose mind is sick.”
― Sophocles
“Better not to exist than live basely.”
― Sophocles
“Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.”
― Sophocles
“Reason is God’s crowning gift to man.”
― Sophocles
“Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.”
― Sophocles
“Reverence does not die with mortals, nor does it perish whether they live or die.”
― Sophocles
“For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.”
― Sophocles
“For shameful deeds are taught by shameful deeds.”
― Sophocles
“War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.”
― Sophocles
“Not all things are to be discovered; many are better concealed.”
― Sophocles
“How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in the truth.”
― Sophocles
“No speech can stain what is noble by nature.”
― Sophocles
“I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.”
― Sophocles
“A lie never lives to be old.”
― Sophocles
“There is a point at which even justice does injury.”
― Sophocles
“No enemy is worse than bad advice.”
― Sophocles
“Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.”
― Sophocles
“Kindness is ever the begetter of kindness.”
― Sophocles
“All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.”
― Sophocles
“There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad.”
― Sophocles
“Do not grieve yourself too much for those you hate, nor yet forget them utterly.”
― Sophocles
“Men may know many things by seeing; but no prophet can see before the event, nor what end waits for him.”
― Sophocles
“Now I see that going out into the testing ground of men it is the tongue and not the deed that wins the day.”
― Sophocles
“If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.”
― Sophocles
“Foolishness is indeed the sister of wickedness.”
― Sophocles
“Men should pledge themselves to nothing; for reflection makes a liar of their resolution.”
― Sophocles
“Evil counsel travels fast.”
― Sophocles
“To live without evil belongs only to the gods.”
― Sophocles
“The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.”
― Sophocles
“For the dead there are no more toils.”
― Sophocles
“Look and you will find it – what is unsought will go undetected.”
― Sophocles
“In a just cause the weak will beat the strong.”
― Sophocles
“Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.”
― Sophocles
“It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.”
― Sophocles
“Trust dies but mistrust blossoms.”
― Sophocles
“There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.”
― Sophocles
“For the wretched one night is like a thousand; for someone faring well death is just one more night.”
― Sophocles
“Even a poor man can receive honors.”
― Sophocles
“No lie ever reaches old age.”
― Sophocles
“If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.”
― Sophocles
“Wise thinkers prevail everywhere.”
― Sophocles
“Deem no man happy until he passes the end of his life without suffering grief.”
― Sophocles
“Not knowing anything is the sweetest life.”
― Sophocles
“Wisdom outweighs any wealth.”
― Sophocles
“If one begins all deeds well, it is likely that they will end well too.”
― Sophocles
“A short saying often contains much wisdom.”
― Sophocles
“To him who is in fear everything rustles.”
― Sophocles
“The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.”
― Sophocles
“It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.”
― Sophocles
“Enemies’ gifts are no gifts and do no good.”
― Sophocles
“Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.”
― Sophocles
“Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.”
― Sophocles
“There are some who praise a man free from disease; to me no man who is poor seems free from disease but to be constantly sick.”
― Sophocles
“He who throws away a friend is as bad as he who throws away his life.”
― Sophocles
“I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.”
― Sophocles
“To give birth is a fearsome thing; there is no hating the child one has borne even when injured by it.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever lives among many evils just as I, how can dying not be a source of gain?”
― Sophocles
“How sweet for those faring badly to forget their misfortunes even for a short time.”
― Sophocles
“If you have done terrible things, you must endure terrible things; for thus the sacred light of injustice shines bright.”
― Sophocles
“Those whose life is long still strive for gain, and for all mortals all things take second place to money.”
― Sophocles
“Don’t you know that silence supports the accuser’s charge?”
― Sophocles
“But this is a true saying among men: the gifts of enemies are no gifts and profitless.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever thinks that he alone has speech, or possesses speech or mind above others, when unfolded such men are seen to be empty.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever understands how to do a kindness when he fares well would be a friend better than any possession.”
― Sophocles
“A day lays low and lifts up again all human things.”
― Sophocles
“The rewards of virtue alone abide secure.”
― Sophocles
“A word does not frighten the man who, in acting, feels no fear.”
― Sophocles
“Gratitude to gratitude always gives birth.”
― Sophocles
“It is best to live however one can be.”
― Sophocles
“Evil gains work their punishment.”
― Sophocles
“No man loves the bearer of bad tidings.”
― Sophocles
“Not even Ares battles against necessity.”
― Sophocles
“Not even old age knows how to love death.”
― Sophocles
“When trouble ends even troubles please.”
― Sophocles
“There is a time when even justice brings harm.”
― Sophocles
“A soul that is kind and intends justice discovers more than any sophist.”
― Sophocles
“It’s a terrible thing to speak well and be wrong.”
― Sophocles
“What house, bloated with luxury, ever became prosperous without a woman’s excellence?”
― Sophocles
“No one who errs unwillingly is evil.”
― Sophocles
“It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.”
― Sophocles
“Whoever thinks his friend more important than his country, I rate him nowhere.”
― Sophocles
“It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.”
― Sophocles
“Man is not constituted to take pleasure in the same things always.”
― Sophocles
“Hide nothing, for time, which sees all and hears all, exposes all.”
― Sophocles
“But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.”
― Sophocles
“It’s impossible to speak what it is not noble to do.”
― Sophocles
“For death is not the worst, but when one wants to die and is not able even to have that.”
― Sophocles
“You should not consider a man’s age but his acts.”
― Sophocles
“A state is not a state if it belongs to one man.”
― Sophocles
“Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.”
― Sophocles
“Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.”
― Sophocles
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