Ajax Sophocles Quotes

If you try to cure evil with evil you will add more pain to your fate.

Which would you choose if you could: pleasure for yourself despite your friends or a share in their grief?

When he endures nothing but endless miseries-- What pleasure is there in living the day after day, Edging slowly back and forth toward death? Anyone who warms their heart with the glow Of flickering hope is worth nothing at all. The noble man should either live with honor or die with honor. That's all there is to be said.

Yet I pity the poor wretch, though he's my enemy. He's yoked to an evil delusion, but the same fate could be mine. I see clearly: we who live are all phantoms, fleeing shadows.

It is a painful thing To look at your own trouble and know That you yourself and no one else has made it

Shall not I Learn place and wisdom? Have I not learned this, Only so much to hate my enemy, As though he might again become my friend, And so much good to wish to do my friend, As knowing he may yet become my foe?

ἰὼ σκότος, ἐμὸν φάος, ἔρεβος ὦ φαεννότατον, ὡς ἐμοί, ἕλεσθ᾽ ἕλεσθέ μ᾽ οἰκήτορα, ἕλεσθέ μ᾽

All things the long and countless years first draw from darkness, then bury from light; and there is nothing for which man may not look. The dreaded oath is vanquished, and the stubborn will.

But when a god             strikes harm, a worse man often foils his better.

He has the thousand-yard stare.

I pity him in his misery for all that he is my foe, because he is bound fast to a dread doom. I think of my own lot no less than his. For I see that we are phantoms, all we who live, or fleeting shadows.

OD: σὺ οὔτε φωνεῖς οὔτε δρασείεις σοφά. NE: ἀλλ‘ εἰ δίκαια, τῶν σοφῶν κρείσσω τάδε.

ODYSSEUS             I cannot recommend a rigid spirit.

What men have seen they know;             but what shall come hereafter             no man before the event can see, 1420    nor what end waits for him.

To look on self-wrought woes, when no other has had a hand in them- this lays sharp pangs to the soul.

Τοσαῦτά σ', ὦ Ζεῦ, προστρέπω· καλῶ δ' ἅμα πομπαῖον Ἑρμῆν χθόνιον εὖ με κοιμίσαι, ξὺν ἀσφαδάστῳ καὶ ταχεῖ πηδήματι.

ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο πλὴν, εἴδωλ‘ ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν ἤ κούφην σκιάν

AGAMEMNÔN. Il n’est pas facile à un roi d’être pieux. ODYSSEUS. Mais les rois peuvent obéir aux amis qui les conseillent bien.

Look well at this, and speak no towering word             yourself against the gods, nor walk too grandly             because your hand is weightier than another’s, 130      or your great wealth deeper founded. One short day             inclines the balance of all human things             to sink or rise again. Know that the gods             love men of steady sense and hate the wicked.

É uma vergonha para um homem almejar uma longa vida, se não conseguir libertar-se dos seus males.

To stretch your life out when you see that nothing can break its misery is shameful – day after day moving forward or back from the end line of death. There’s no joy in that Any mortal who warms his heart over empty hopes is worthless in my eyes. Honor in life or in death; if a man is born noble, he must have one or the other.

It is a painful thing To look at your own trouble and know That you yourself and no one else has made it • Sophocles, Ajax

Specifically, animal forms in Er’s vision serve to transmute passions into virtues. Ajax, nursing his grievance over the arms of Achilles, chooses the life of a lion, spurning the human form (620b). Plato obviously comments here upon the fit of insane rage in which, in Sophocles’ tragedy, Ajax slaughters sheep and cattle, thinking them the Greek leaders who have disgraced him. A hero become ignoble in the throes of passion becomes here a creature who kills dispassionately to survive. Ajax can more easily manifest virtue as a lion than as a human who would begin from the place where the son of Telamon ended; he can be a just lion who could no longer be a just human.