Quotes & Sayings About Oedipus Rex

I don't know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise Blood but I am often embarrassed to find that I read the sources after I had written the book. I have been exposed to Wordsworth's "Intimation" ode but that is all I can say about it. I have one of those food-chopper brains that nothing comes out of the way it went in. The Oedipus business comes nearer home. Of course Haze Motes is not an Oedipus figure but there are the obvious resemblances. At the time I was writing the last of the book, I was living in Connecticut with the Robert Fitzgeralds. Robert Fitzgerald translated the Theban cycle with Dudley Fitts, and their translation of the Oedipus Rex had just come out and I was much taken with it. Do you know that translation? I am not an authority on such things but I think it must be the best, and it is certainly very beautiful. Anyway, all I can say is, I did a lot of thinking about Oedipus. — Flannery O'Connor

Give me a life wherever there is an opportunity to live, and better life than was my father's. — Sophocles

Long, long ago; her thought was of that child
By him begot, the son by whom the sire
Was murdered and the mother left to breed
With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.
Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon
Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,
Husband by husband, children by her child. — Sophocles

Thou lov'st to speak in riddles and dark words. — Sophocles

Time alone can bring the just man to light - the criminal you can spot in just one short day. — Sophocles

Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire? O Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed. — Sophocles

Listen, Kafka. What you're experiencing now is the motif of many Greek tragedies. Man doesn't choose fate. Fate chooses man. That's the basic worldview of Greek drama. And the sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results. — Haruki Murakami

This may not be art as art commonly goes; the lack of discipline, of control, would seem to rule it out of that category. And yet Woolrich's lack of control over emotions is a crucial element in his work, not only because it intensifies the fragility and momentariness of love but also because it tears away the comfortable belief, evident in some of the greatest works of the human imagination such as Oedipus Rex, that nobility in the face of nothingness is possible. And if Woolrich's work is not art as commonly understood, there is an art beyond art, whose form is not the novel or story but the scream; and of this art Woolrich is beyond doubt a master. ("Introduction") — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

The two greatest plays ever written were Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, and they're both about father-son relationships. — Arthur Miller

How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth. — Sophocles

Closer,
it's all right. Touch the man of grief.
Do. Don't be afraid. My troubles are mine
and I am the only man alive who can sustain them. — Sophocles

King as thou art, free speech at least is mine. To make reply; in this I am thy peer. — Sophocles

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure. — Tom Robbins

Weep not, everything must have its day. — Sophocles