AESCHYLUS QUOTES IV
Greek dramatist (525 B.C.-456 B.C.)
There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
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
Nought is there in wealth that serves as bulwark 'gainst the subtle stealth Of Destiny and Doom.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, a glory that to suffering owes its birth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
It would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Jars neither of wine nor of water shall fail in the houses of the rich.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Kabeiroi
Some are lapped in night, where all things are undone.
AESCHYLUS
The Libation Bearers
Thou needs must spit it out and make clean thy mouth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
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
Not for laggards doth a contest wait.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Glaukos Potnieus
Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
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
Woe, woe for the doom that shall be--as in grasp of the foeman they fare!
For a woe and a weeping it is, if the maiden inviolate flower
Is plucked by the foe in his might, not culled in the bridal bower!
AESCHYLUS
The Seven Against Thebes
Ye waves
That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe
Your crisped smiles.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Chained
Joy steals upon me, such joy as calls forth tears.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon