Antigone Quotes

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still.

A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.

There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

I was born to join in love, not hate - that is my nature.

We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.

Tomorrow is tomorrow. Future cares have future cures, And we must mind today.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.

Leave me to my own absurdity.

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

No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.

A city which belongs to just one man is no true city

It is not right if I am wrong. But if I am young, and right, what does my age matter?

There is no greater evil than men's failure to consult and to consider.

I have no love for a friend who loves in words alone.

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

I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!

Do not believe that you alone can be right. The man who thinks that, The man who maintains that only he has the power To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul— A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

Do not fear for me. Make straight your own path to destiny.

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.

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom...

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man

Oh it's terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.

What greater wound is there than a false friend?

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.

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

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

It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me

Of all vile things current on earth, none is so vile as money.

All men make mistakes.

It is the dead, not the living, who make the longest demands.

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.

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

Reason is God's crowning gift to a man...

Goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer;

Tell me the news, again, whatever it is... sorrow and I are hardly strangers. I can bear the worst.

You're in love with impossibility

My nails are broken, my fingers are bleeding, my arms are covered with the welts left by the paws of your guards—but I am a queen!

Only a fool could be in love with death.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

What do I care for life when you are dead?

Take these things to heart, my son, I warn you. All men make mistakes, it is only human. But once the wrong is done, a man can turn his back on folly, misfortune too, if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen, and stops his bullnecked ways. Stubbornness brands you for stupidity - pride is a crime.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the Gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise.

Another husband could be found and with That husband another son. But I have no mother now. I have no father. I cannot bring another brother to the world.

Sister - if all this is true, what could I do or undo?

A happy love is full of quarrels, you know.

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.

perhaps you know that Ingeborg Bachmann poem from the last years of her life that begins "I lose my screams" dear Antigone, I take it as the task of the translator to forbid that you should ever lose your screams

To err is common To all men, but the man who having erred Hugs not his errors, but repents and seeks The cure, is not a wastrel nor unwise.

You chose to live, I chose to die.

What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island - you and you alone.

I will suffer nothing as great as death without glory.

Unnatural silence signifies no good.

Every way Leads but astray,

For time is short and the unknown surrounds us; and it isn't enough just to live unthinking and happy, calmly bearing oppression and only learning wisdom with age.

And if my present actions strike you as foolish, let's just say I've been accused of folly by a fool.

Haemon: No city is property of a single man. Creon: But custom gives possession to the ruler. Haemon: You'd rule a desert beautifully alone.

You disgust me, all of you, with your happiness! With your life that must be loved at all costs. […] I spit on your idea of life! […] You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell! […] I do not want to understand. I am here for something other than understanding. I am here to tell you no, and to die. To tell you no and to die.

No yield to the dead! Never stab the fighter when he's down. Where's the glory, killing the dead twice over?

There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird, When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone." - Sentry

I don't even exist—I'm no one. Nothing.

Vous me dégoûtez tous avec votre bonheur ! Avec votre vie qu’il faut aimer coûte que coûte… Moi, je veux tout, tout de suite, et que ce soit entier, ou alors je refuse! Je ne veux pas être modeste , moi, et de me contenter d’un petit morceau, si j’ai été bien sage.

C'est plein de disputes, un bonheur.

A State for one man is no State at all.

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.

One soul is enough, I know, to pay the debt for thousands, if one will go to the gods in all good faith.

The blind man cannot move without a guide

I know not, but strained silence, so I deem, IS no less ominous than excessive grief.

They're both mad, I tell you, the two of them. One's just shown it, the other's been that way since she was born.

Sentry: King, may I speak? Creon: Your very voice distresses me. Sentry: Are you sure that it is my voice, and not your conscience? Creon: By God, he wants to analyze me now! Sentry: It is not what I say, but what has been done, that hurts you. Creon: You talk too much.

For death is gain to him whose life, like mine, is full of misery

But if I am young, thou shouldest look to my merits, not to my years.

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

I was born to join in love, not hate--that is my nature

We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us

I pleasure those whom I would liefest please.

Cling not to one mood, And deemed not thou art right, all others wrong. For whoso thinks that wisdom dwells with him, That he alone can speak or think alright, Such oracles are empty breath when tried. The wisest man will let himself be swayed By other's wisdom and relax in time.

There let her pray to the one god she worships: Death--who knows?--may just reprieve her from death. Or she may learn a last, better late than never, what a waste of breath it is to worship Death.

It's little I ask, and get still less, but quite enough for me.

Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time who turns his back on a decent length of life, I'll show the world a man who clings to folly.

Come, Fate, a friend at need, Come with all speed! Come, my best friend, And speed my end! Away, away! Let me not look upon another day!

By God, I'll have more booty in a moment.

My part is not a heroic one, but I shall play my part.

A friend in word is never friend of mine.

You'll never find a man on Earth, if a god leads him on, who can escape his fate.

Even in these straits our life is not as pitiful as you'd think, so long as we find joy in every hour.

The dead alone feel no pain.

It's not through words but actions that I want to set the luster on my life.

No man, my lord, should make a vow, for if He ever swears he will not do a thing.

The stubbornest of wills Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, O'er-heated in the fire to brittleness, Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none More wonderful than man; the storm gray sea Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high; Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven With shining furrows where his plows have gone Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions. The light-boned birds and beasts that cling to cover, The lithe fish lighting their reaches of dim water, All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind; The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy-maned, Resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull. Words also, and thought as rapid as air, He fashions to his good use; statecraft is his And his the skill that deflects the arrows of snow, The spears of winter rain: from every wind He has made himself secure--from all but one: In the late wind of death he cannot stand. O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! O fate of man, working both good and evil! When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands! When the laws are broken, what of his city then? Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth, Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts.

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job . . . The rest is automatic. You don’t need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction . . . Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless . . . In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone’s destiny is known. That makes for tranquility . . . Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn’t any hope. You’re trapped.

Hail the sun! the brightest of all that ever Dawned on the City of Seven Gates, City of Thebes! Hail the golden dawn over Dirce's river Rising to speed the flight of the white invaders Homeward in full retreat!" - Chorus

Comprendre... Vous n'avez que ce mot-là à la bouche, tous, depuis que je suis toute petite. Il fallait comprendre qu'on ne peut pas toucher à l'eau, à la belle eau fuyante et froide parce que cela mouille les dalles, à la terre parce que cela tache les robes. Il fallait comprendre qu'on ne doit pas manger tout à la fois, donner tout ce qu'on a dans ses poches au mendiant qu'on rencontre, courir, courir dans le vent jusqu'à ce qu'on tombe par terre et boire quand on a chaud et se baigner quand il est trop tôt ou trop tard, mais pas juste quand on en a envie ! Comprendre. Toujours comprendre. Moi, je ne veux pas comprendre. Je comprendrai quand je serai vieille [...]. Si je deviens vieille. Pas maintenant.

Et puis, surtout, c'est reposant, la tragédie, parce qu'on sait qu'il n'y a plus d'espoir, le sale espoir ; qu'on est pris, qu'on est enfin pris comme un rat, avec tout le ciel sur son dos, et qu'on n'a plus qu'à crier, - pas à gémir, non, pas à se plaindre, à gueuler à pleine voix ce qu'on avait à dire, qu'on n'avait jamais dit et qu'on ne savait peut-être même pas encore. Et pour rien : pour se le dire à soi, pour l'apprendre, soi.

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

how is a Greek chorus like a lawyer they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent finding an analogy locating a prior example so as to be able to say this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is not unique you know it happened before or something much like it we’re not at a loss how to think about this we’re not without guidance there is a pattern we can find an historically parallel case and file it away under ANTIGONE BURIED ALIVE FRIDAY AFTERNOON COMPARE CASE HISTORIES 7, 17 AND 49 now I could dig up those case histories tell you about Danaos and Lykourgos and the sons of Phineus people locked up in a room or a cave or their own dark mind it wouldn’t help you it doesn’t help me it’s Friday afternoon there goes Antigone to be buried alive

Your edict, King, was strong, But all your strength is weakness itself against The immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were, and shall be, Operative for ever, beyond man utterly. I knew I must die, even without your decree: I am only mortal. And if I must die Now, before it is my time to die, Surely this is no hardship: can anyone Living, as I live, with evil all about me, Think Death less than a friend?

You are the king no doubt, but in one respect, at least, I am your equal: the right to reply. I claim that privilege too. I am not your slave. I serve Apollo. I don't need Creon to speak for me in public. So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption in your life, to the house you live in, those you live with- who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above, and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse will whip you from this land one day, their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light! Soon, soon, you'll scream aloud - what haven won't reverberate? What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo? That day you learn the truth about your marriage, the wedding-march that sang you into your halls, the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor! And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dream will level you with yourself and all your children. There. Now smear us with insults - Creon, myself and every word I've said. No man will ever be rooted from the earth as brutally as you.