AESCHYLUS QUOTES V
Greek dramatist (525 B.C.-456 B.C.)
Watchful are the Gods of all
Hands with slaughter stained. The black
Furies wait, and when a man
Has grown by luck, not justice, great,
With sudden overturn of chance
They wear him to a shade, and, cast
Down to perdition, who shall save him?
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, a glory that to suffering owes its birth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Respect the altar of Justice and do not, looking to profit, dishonor it by spurning with godless foot; for punishment will come upon you.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
When a man dies, flesh is frayed and broken in the fire, but not his will.
AESCHYLUS
The Libation Bearers
Words are the parents of a causeless wrath.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Long tarries destiny, but comes to those who pray.
AESCHYLUS
The Libation Pourers
Joy steals upon me, such joy as calls forth tears.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
It would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Thou needs must spit it out and make clean thy mouth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
But thou, like newly-yoked colt,
Champing the bit, dost fight against the rein
Fiercely; yet futile the device wherein
Madly thou trustest; for mere stubbornness
Avails the foolish-hearted less than nought.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Toxotides
On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Death hath a fairer fame than a life of toil.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Ixion
Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Obedience is the mother of success, and the wife of security.
AESCHYLUS
The Seven Against Thebes
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, to come to me; of cureless ills thou art the one physician. Pain lays not its touch upon a corpse.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Philoctetes
No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind's whirling wrath.
AESCHYLUS
Libation Bearers
Ask the gods nothing excessive.
AESCHYLUS
The Suppliant Women
Memory is the mother of all wisdom.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound