Antigone's Quotes & Sayings

Leave me to my own absurdity. — Sophocles

I was born to share love, not hate", said Antigone. "Go then, and share your love for the dead", responds Creon. — Sophocles

As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor ghosts. — Thomas Hardy

What woe is lacking to my tale of woes? — Sophocles

It is my nature to join in love, not hate. — Sophocles

Antigone: We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.
Ismene: Who said that?
Antigone: Hegel.
Ismene: Sounds more like Beckett.
Antigone: He was paraphrasing Hegel.
Ismene: I don't think so. — Anne Carson

What greater wound is there than a false friend? — Sophocles

Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law. — Jean Anouilh

Upon that foreign soil he chose
Died he! For ever laid
Low, in the kindly shade,
He left behind no tearless grief,
No measured mourning, dull and brief,
These eyes are wet
With weeping yet,
Nor know I how to find relief."

Antigone — Sophocles

Miss Havisham is an important feminine literary figure in the tradition of Antigone (though it's significant that Antigone is fighting to bury something and Miss Havisham refuses, as it were, to bury the corpse). Like Hamlet, she's focused on what everyone would rather not know or would like to forget, and she seems crazy / stuck as well as bitter, but she's also a perfect prototype of a performance artist. She's intentionally hard to deal with inviting the audience to remain with the violated body, the evidence of violence. — Laura Mullen

Mourning suits us Spanish women.
Tragedy turns us into Antigone - maybe
we are bred for the part. — Judith Ortiz Cofer

Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong. — Sophocles

Why, he was so handsome and brave that no one would ever have suspected that he was bookish! — Gerald Morris

I am not a playwright. A playwright would take Antigone and hit it a few clouts and knock it out of shape and restructure it. My versioning was strictly verbal. — Seamus Heaney

It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me — Jean Anouilh

Antigone - as you will see when you read the play - was a woman who wouldn't yield to men. She did what she thought was right. And I admire Antigone a great deal. But the play is largely about pride and what happens when people are stubborn - refuse to bend. It ends in tragedy, as tragedies often do. — Matthew Quick

What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough. — Juliana Spahr

The penalty is death: yet hope of gain Hath lured men to their ruin oftentimes. — Sophocles

Goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer; — Sophocles

Sophokles is a playwright fascinated in general by people who say no, people who resist compromise, people who make stumbling blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax. — Aeschylus

I believe in prophetic speech . . . still. I believe in Cassandra, I believe in Electra and in the charming Antigone. . . . For me, they're more alive than the [Institute for] Intellectual Cooperation and its choice group of old men. — Gabriella Mistral

ANTIGONE Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could'st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven. They were not born today nor yesterday; They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang. I was not like, who feared no mortal's frown, To disobey these laws and so provoke The wrath of Heaven. I knew that I must die, E'en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain. For death is gain to him whose life, like mine, Is full of misery. Thus my lot appears Not sad, but blissful; for had I endured To leave my mother's son unburied there, I should have grieved with reason, but not now. And if in this thou judgest me a fool, Methinks the judge of folly's not acquit. — Sophocles

I studied classics, and I find it mystifying that we had Medea and Electra and Antigone and all these amazing characters, and they don't really exist in cinema now. The only person who's really doing it, and he gets loads of criticism for it, is Lars Von Trier. — Alice Lowe

Don't let anyone tell you that the truth can't disappear. If I believe in anything, rather than God, is that I am part of something that goes all the way back to Antigone, and that whatever speaks the truth of our hearts can only make us stronger. Can only give us the power to counter the hate and bigotry and heal this addled world.
Just remember: You are not alone. — Paul Monette

Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.

He backed up.

"Try one of Skelton's keys," said Antigone. "Is there a keyhole?"

"Nope." Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. "I can break it."

"You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?" Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her.

"There's just one little bolt," said Cyrus. "And it's set in old wood." He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. "You hear that?" he asked.

Antigone nodded. "They don't sound happy."

This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight. — N.D. Wilson

The Greeks had considered hope the final evil in Pandora's box. They also gave us an image of perfect nobility: a human being lovingly doing her duty to another human being despite all threats, and going to her death with pride and courage, not deterred by any hope - Antigone. — Walter Kaufmann

I have been a stranger here in my own land: All my life — Sophocles