Euripides Quotes & Sayings

The man who sticks it out against his fate shows spirit, but the spirit of a fool. — Euripides

I sacrifice to no god save myself- And to my belly, greatest of deities. — Euripides

You will not achieve happiness if you don't work hard; and it's a shame not to want to work hard. — Euripides

Terrible is the force of the waves of sea, terrible is the rush of the river and the blasts of hot fire, and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a terrible evil as woman. — Euripides

This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. — Euripides

The childless escape much misery. — Euripides

Time will unveil all things to posterity. — Euripides

Some men never find prosperity, For all their voyaging, While others find it with no voyaging. — Euripides

Do not consider painful what is good for you. — Euripides

This town must learn,
even against its will, how much it costs
to scorn a God's mysteries and to be purged.
So shall I vindicate my virgin mother
and reveal myself to mortals as a God,
the son of God. — Euripides

High honors are sweet To a man's heart, but ever They stand close to the brink of grief. — Euripides

Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life? — Euripides

The wavering mind is but a base possession. — Euripides

Sorrow is long
when love has vanished underground. — Euripides

You were a stranger to sorrow: therefore Fate has cursed you. — Euripides

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will. — Euripides

Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lends aid. — Euripides

What heavenly power lends an ear
To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver? — Euripides

Time will bring healing. — Euripides

Women's love is for their men, not for their children. — Euripides

Youth holds no society with grief. — Euripides

Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words No undue credence: for I say that kings Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, And doing thus are happier than those Who live calm pious lives day after day All divinity Is built-up from our good and evil luck. — Euripides

Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? — Euripides

A woman should always stand by a woman. — Euripides

Oh, say, how call ye this,
To face, and smile, the comrade whom his kiss
Betrayed? Scorn? Insult? Courage? None of these:
'Tis but of all man's inward sicknesses
The vilest, that he knoweth not of shame
Nor pity! Yet I praise him that he came ...
To me it shall bring comfort, once to clear
My heart on thee, and thou shalt wince to hear. — Euripides

He was a wise man who originated the idea of God. — Euripides

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put. — Euripides

He is life's liberating force. He is release of limbs and communion through dance. He is laughter, and music in flutes. He is repose from all cares
he is sleep! When his blood bursts from the grape and flows across tables laid in his honor to fuse with our blood, he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows of ivy-cool sleep. — Euripides

What other creatures are bred so exquisitely and purposefully for mistreatment as women are? — Euripides

The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought. — Euripides

What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he doth this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes? — Euripides

A woman should be good for everything at home, but abroad good for nothing. — Euripides

To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter. — Euripides

Impudence is the worst of all human diseases. — Euripides

It's human; we all put self interest first. — Euripides

Dead men have no victory. — Euripides

The best of seers is he who guesses well. — Euripides

Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them. — Euripides

The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely. — Euripides

There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal. — Euripides

Come, God
Bromius, Bacchus, Dionysus
burst into life, burst
into being, be a mighty bull,
a hundred-headed snake,
a fire-breathing lion.
Burst into smiling life, oh Bacchus! — Euripides

Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry. — Euripides

When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury, like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will. — Euripides

I care for riches, to make gifts. — Euripides

Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future. — Euripides

Wine enlivens the human soul. — Euripides

Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream. — Euripides

If a man rejoice not in his drinking, he is mad; for in drinking it's possible ... to fondle breasts, and to caress well tended locks, and there is dancing withal, and oblivion of woe. — Euripides

Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum, we have bought a husband, we must then accept him as possessor of our body. — Euripides

A bad beginning makes a bad ending. — Euripides

The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate. — Euripides

O Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether gold is counterfeit but, when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good. — Euripides

To die with glory, if one has to die at all, is still, I think, pain for the dier. — Euripides

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account. — Euripides

No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform. — Euripides

Time cancels young pain. — Euripides

Life is a short affair; We should try to make it smooth, and free from strife. — Euripides

This is true liberty, when free-born men, having to advise the public, may speak free. — Euripides

Who cannot open an honest mind No friend will he be of mine. — Euripides

Delusive hope still points to distant good. — Euripides

Cowards do not count in battle; they are there, but not in it. — Euripides

If all men saw the fair and wise the same men would not have debaters' double strife. — Euripides

In your grief, too, I weep, mother of little children, You who will murder your own, In vengeance for the loss of married love — Euripides

That glittering hope is immemorial and beckons many men to their undoing. — Euripides

They who are sad find somehow sweetness in tears. — Euripides

Why long for death's marriage bed
which human beings all shun?
Death comes soon enough
and brings and end to everything. — Euripides

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow. — Euripides

Know we how many tomorrows the gods intend for our todays. — Euripides

Mankind led on by gods err all too easily. — Euripides

I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief — Euripides

Black evil is outlined clearest to our eyes by the blaze of virtue — Euripides

To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words. — Euripides

The bold are helpless without cleverness. — Euripides

Action achieves more than words. — Euripides

Nothing happens to man without the permission of God ... — Euripides

Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive — Euripides

Keep alive the light of justice, And much that men say in blame will pass you by. — Euripides

May he die with no joy at his end, The man who won't be troubled To unlock the keys of his heart and make a friend. — Euripides

Death is what men want when the anguish of living is more than they can bear. — Euripides

They did attack our herds: you could have seen a woman pull a calf to pieces as it bellowed alive in her bare hands! — Euripides

Friends show their love in times of trouble. — Euripides

[Diontsos].
Swoony type,
long hair, bedroom eyes,
cheeks like wine. — Euripides

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. — Euripides

Zeus hates busybodies and those who do too much. — Euripides

To generous souls every task is noble. — Euripides

Remember this! No amount of Bacchic reveling can corrupt an honest woman. — Euripides

Amongst mortals no man is happy; wealth may pour in and make one luckier than another, but none can happy be. — Euripides

Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the market place. — Euripides

We'll see how the sky catches fire. We'll see how she feeds the flames with her implacable hate. — Euripides

Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails. — Euripides

Everyone asks if a man is rich, no one if he is good. — Euripides

I care for riches, to make gifts To friends, or lead a sick man back to health With ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth For daily gladness; once a man be done With hunger, rich and poor are all as one. — Euripides

Oh, in all things but this,
I know how full of fears a woman is,
And faint at need, and shrinking from the light
Of battle: but once spoil her of her right
In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well,
No bloodier spirit between heaven and hell. — Euripides

Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace, Ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues. — Euripides

Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be the friend of every man. — Euripides

Oh, trebly blest the placid lot of those whose hearth foundations are in pure love laid, where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows, and wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid! — Euripides

Better a serpent than a stepmother! — Euripides

Happy the man whose lot it is to know The secrets of the earth. He hastens not To work his fellows hurt by unjust deeds, But with rapt admiration contemplates Immortal Nature's ageless harmony, And how and when the order came to be. — Euripides

Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife. — Euripides

We must take care of our minds because we cannot benefit from beauty when our brains are missing. — Euripides