Greek Play Quotes & Sayings

I used to think when I was younger and writing that each idea had a certain shape and when I started to study Greek and I found the word morphe it was for me just the right word for that, unlike the word shape in English which falls a bit short morphe in greek means the sort of plastic contours that an idea has inside your all your senses when you grasp it the first moment and it always seemed to me that a work should play out that same contour in its form. So I can't start writing something down til I get a sense of that, that morphe. And then it unfolds, I wouldn't say naturally, but it unfolds gropingly by keeping only to the contours of that form whatever it is. — Anne Carson

There have always been dreamers. Men and women who catch a glimpse of something beyond themselves who dare to reach for goals and visions.. Yet no earthly dreamer can match the greatest of them all, the Dreamer who died on the cross to make His dream a reality. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word." The literal meaning of logos, the original Greek term translated as "Word," is idea, thought or blueprint. It is an ancient Greek theatrical term describing the work of a playwright as he conceives, or dreams up, the plot of a play. So we could say, "In the beginning was the dream". — Tommy Tenney

Everyone on my team is different in terms of how long before a workout they prefer to eat. I like to eat my big meal 4.5-5 hours before I play. I usually eat a carb either rice or pasta with tofu or chicken. Around 2 hours before I play to like to eat greek yogurt with a banana. — Kim Smith

One would have a strong case for arguing that it was the men in her life - the lovers, the father, the directors, producers, critics - who destroyed it. And yet when you looked at the broad sweep they appeared more as agents, collectively, of a darker, wider force of ruin that pursued her. It was as if her epic beauty somehow angered the gods and drew down a suitably Promethean punishment; and the girl behind the beauty - the nice girl from Connecticut who at the end would wonder whether, if her life had been a movie, she would have been cast to play her part - found she had wandered off the lot into a Greek tragedy. [On Gene Tierney] — Paul Murray

You say some Greek philosophers could dazzle their audiences
with their riddles? That does not interest me at all. Bring
more wine instead and play your lute; your changes in tones
remind me of the wind that rushes past and disappears,
just like us. — Omar Khayyam

In childbirth grief begins. — Euripides

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

Old loves are dropped when new ones come — Euripides

Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage
Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.
Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.
Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.
Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man. — William Shakespeare

The Greeks believed that it was a citizen's duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgement, patience, all the social virtues."
"And the Greek were conquered by the more practical Romans, Arthur."
"Indeed, the Romans built their bridges, but they also spent many centuries wishing they were Greeks. And they, after all, were conquered by the barbarians, or by their own corrupt and small spirits. — Timberlake Wertenbaker

I couldn't help wondering where porpoises had learned this game of running on the bows of ships. Porpoises have been swimming in the oceans for seven to ten million years, but they've had human ships to play with for only the last few thousand. Yet nearly all porpoises, in every ocean, catch rides for fun from passing ships; and they were doing it on the bows of Greek triremes and prehistoric Tahitian canoes, as soon as those seacraft appeared. What did they do for fun before ships were invented?
Ken Norris made a field observation one day that suggests the answer. He saw a humpback whale hurrying along the coast of the island of Hawaii, unavoidably making a wave in front of itself; playing in that bow wave was a flock of bottlenose porpoises. The whale didn't seem to be enjoying it much: Ken said it looked like a horse being bothered by flies around its head; however, there was nothing much the whale could do about it, and the porpoises were having a fun time. — Karen Pryor

If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood
to hate himself. — Carter G. Woodson

You don't come to see a Greek play and not want blood and gore and depth of feeling from your boots up. — Ruth Negga

Drawing is like studying Greek and piano- you can't speak or play in your conscious, which is clumsy. You must get it into your subconscious, which is graceful. But that takes time. — Robert Beverly Hale

Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55) — Gilbert Highet

Not too little, not too much: there safety lies. — Euripides

I always think a good sports movie is emblematic in the same way that a great Greek tragedy really has a certain kind of structure, or a Shakespearean play if you're looking at a comedy or a tragedy, is that these are the heights and depths of human emotion. — Carla Gugino

Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll. — Euripides

Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it. — Euripides

A strange jet-lag numbness filled my head. I couldn't separate the boundary between what was real and what only seemed real. Here I was, on a small Greek island, sharing a meal with a beautiful older woman I'd met only the day before. This woman loved Sumire. But couldn't feel any sexual desire for her. Sumire loved this woman and desired her. I loved Sumire and felt sexual desire for her. Sumire liked me but didn't love me, and didn't feel any desire for me. I felt sexual desire for a woman who will remain anonymous. But I didn't love her. It was all so complicated, like something out of an existential play. — Haruki Murakami

I'm this dude that can play a farmhand and a handyman and sometimes a Greek god. — Luke Evans

I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once. — Euripides

Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding 'In the beginning' in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the universe out of nothing. — Neil MacGregor

Beauty misleads without lying, like an ambiguous prophecy in a Greek play. We read into it our hopes, to which it is indifferent. We ask it to be true and good, but it has its own way of measuring worth, its own standard and authority. — Phillip Margulies

I always wanted to play a Greek god in something. — Kellan Lutz

In a battle of wills, of the gods of old. For each his revenge, will he forfeit his soul. On the chess board of blood, will their narrative play. aged, innocent lives, revenge claims her way. Out of hate will come love, and love will come hate. For immortal and man, have entwined their damned fate. — L.A. Starkey

Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire. — Kelly Link

Under (Lyndon) Johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy. All the action takes place offstage, before the play begins. Nothing is left for the participants but the enactment of their prescribed roles. — Bobby Baker

I often teach a graduate theater seminar on Greek tragedy in performance. I usually begin by saying that no matter what technological advances occur, the wisdom of these plays will never be obsolete. — Neil Patrick Harris