Theban Quotes & Sayings

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

We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas. — Mona Caird

Here Stormbringer spies the Stepsons, the Theban fighters, and the 3rd Commando, attending to their own. In the face of such unflinching determination and unswerving devotion, the hurricane pauses and calms. Its ravings turn to mutters. — Janet Morris

Theban who acquires his wealth by inheritance builds his mansion with the weak poor's money. The clergyman erects his temple upon the graves and bones of the devoted worshippers. The prince grasps the fellah's arms while the priest empties his pocket; the ruler looks upon the sobs of the fields with frowning face, and the bishop consoles them with his smile, and between the frown of the tiger and the smile of the wolf the flock is perished; the ruler claims himself as king if the law, and the priest as the representative if god, and between these two, the bodies are destroyed and the souls wither into nothing. — Kahlil Gibran

Leave that. Leave all that and join us here. There is no loneliness, no separation at all. No aching bones, no worn-out bodies. It's not what they told us, Fitz! All those warnings and dire predictions . . . faugh! The world will go on without us just as well as it did with us. Just let go.

I'm holding you tight. Keeping you part of me. It's like learning to swim. You can't find out how until you're all the way into the water. Stop clinging to the bank, boy. You only tear apart when you try to hold onto the shore. — Robin Hobb

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? — Plato

If ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, then children are somewhat closer to our roots as primates in the arboreal forest. Humans appear to be the only primates that I know of that are afraid of heights. All other primates, when they're scared, they run up a tree, where they feel safe. — Richard Preston

I really like Septimus Heap. he is my favorite guy in the story. I should make you all read it. — Angie Sage

Once you want something, everything changes. — Ally Condie

Race always comes up in the conversation of Detroit. — Julie Mehretu

CEOs are paid for doing a terrible job. If the system wasn't so messed up, guys like me wouldn't make this kind of money. — Carl Icahn

Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane. — Janet Morris

The stories of Harmonius and Aristogeiton, of Phaedrus of the Theban Band were well enough for those whose hearts were empty, but no substitute for life. That Clive should occasionally prefer them puzzled him. — E. M. Forster

It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. — Jane Austen

Wherever modern Science has exploded a superstitious fable or even a picturesque error, she has replaced it with a grander and even more poetical truth. — George Perkins Marsh

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart. — David Carr

Once two clever Athenian policemen were pursuing a Theban thief towards the city boundaries when they came upon a sign: 'The Sign of the Grape. Thebans made welcome.' One said: 'He will have taken refuge here.'
'No,' cried the other, 'this is just the place where he will expect us to look for him.' 'Exactly,' rejoined the first, 'so he will have decided to outwit us by entering.' They therefore searched the place thoroughly. Meanwhile the Theban thief, who could not read, had run on to safety across the boundary. — Robert Graves

Some days load themselves with questions whose answers have died, and maybe never mattered hugely — John Graves

But wars - or the threat of war - at least put an end to American chattel slavery, Nazism, Fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism. It is hard to think of any democracy - Afghan, American, Athenian, contemporary German, Iraqi, Italian, Japanese, ancient Theban - that was not an outcome of armed struggle and war. — Victor Davis Hanson

My body kills me, so I kill it. — Dorotheus The Theban

There is nothing like success to breed followers. — Geoffrey Ballard

TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy. — Sophocles

And what do the Theban hoplites see in this extended rending of the sky, this white-bright glory of Enlil's lightning? The future, but not theirs: paired cavalry fighters; formed ranks of armored death; grim men on their tall horses with lightning limning weapons tailored to the task; men spoiling for a fight if the gods allowed - the Sacred Band of Stepsons, out from shadows and the dark. — Janet Morris

I tend to write it and then let go emotionally. — James Horner

The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, Anabasis, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly's Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I — Pierce Brown

Wisdom is a mother;
proverbs are her offspring. — Matshona Dhliwayo