Electra Sophocles Quotes

Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.

I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.

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.

Yes it will be a grace if I die. To exist is pain. Life is no desire of mine anymore.

For Time calls only once, and that determines all.

You're dreaming, girl, lost in a moving dream.

I am at the end. I exist no more.

Not from Hades' black and universal lake can you lift him. Not by groaning, not by prayers. Yet you run yourself out in a grief with no cure, no time-limit, no measure. It is a knot no one can untie. Why are you so in love with things unbearable?

There is a kind of excellence in me and you—born in us—and it cannot live in shame.

ORESTES: Just to see the outline of your suffering ELECTRA: Yet this is only a fraction of it you see.

What an ugly, loveless life for a girl.

Shame I do feel. And I know there is something all wrong about me—believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.

Orestes: How could you recognize me after all these years? Elektra: What a stupid question. I was born knowing you.

I will not live by rules like those.

Think again, Electra. Don't say anymore. Don't you see what you're doing? You make your own pain. Why keep wounding yourself? With so much evil stored up in that cold dark soul of yours you breed enemies everywhere you touch.

Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands.

You are a woman marked for sorrow.

Yes I know sorrow. Know it far too well. My life is a tunnel choked by the sweepings of dread.

Orestes beloved. as you die you destroy me. You have torn away the part of my mind where hope was .

This is Electra. Brilliant no more.

By dread things I am compelled. I know that. I see the trap closing. I know what I am. But while life is in me I will not stop this violence. No. Oh my friends who is there to comfort me? Who understands? Leave me be, let me go, do not soothe me. This is a knot no one can untie. There will be no rest, there is no retrieval. No number exists for griefs like these.

I live in a place of tears.

Oh my love take me there. Let me dwell where you are. I am already nothing, I am already burning. Oh my love, I was once part of you—take me too!

But when a god sends harm, no man can sidestep it, no matter how strong he may be.

Electra, grieving for death, for her father, as a nightingale grieving always.

All my love gone for nothing. Days of my love, years of my love.

ELECTRA: Oh but my love—now that you have travelled back down all those years to meet my heart, over all this grief of mine, do not oh love— ORESTES: What are you asking? ELECTRA: Do not turn your face from me. Don't take yourself away.

And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadow.

You are nothing at all. Just a crack where the light slipped through.

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

Here he comes like a stealing shadow, like a footprint of death into the rooms, stalking the past with freshcut blood in his hands.

I need one food: I must not violate Elektra

Harsh ways are taught by harshness.

Now is no time to delay. This is the edge of action.

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.

Not long now: the blazing dream of my head is crawling out.

There is something bad here, growing. Day and night I watch it. Growing. —Sophocles, Electra

Last night was a night of bad dreams and ambiguous visions.

Remember: women may not be too weak To strike a blow. -Sophocles, Electra

Electra spends the entirety of Sophocles's play in a doorway, I say to my students, when we read his Theban trilogy in my Adaptations course. She is unable to return home and unable to venture into the world. Pay attention to doorways, to paths, to in-between spaces, I tell them, these are the places of transformation.

None but a fool or an infant could forget a father gone so far and cold. No. Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around my mind—like the bird who calls Itys! Itys! endlessly, bird of grief, angel of Zeus. O heartdragging Niobe, I count you a god: buried in rock yet always you weep.

Only fools think that they alone Are wise, and hear no other point of view. À wise man is never ashamed to learn, To listen, and bend when the time is right. When a flood sweeps through a forest, the trees That bend survive, keep every leaf intact; The ones that don't snap off and are swept away. A wise man knows when to slacken sail; À fool refuses and overturns his ship.

No pity for these things, there is no pity but mine, oh father, for the pity of your butchering rawblood death.

Never since that time has this house got itself clear of rawblood butchery.

Long have we lived in shadows and shuddering: today I think our future is opening out.

But death was a wind too strong for that.

Careful! There is war in women too, as you know by experience, I think.

You drive me back down my desperation—that unclouded incurable never forgotten evil growing inside my life.

[H]ave my miseries a measure?

Twas dire oppression taught me my complaint. I know my rage a quenchless fire: But nought, however dire, Shall visit this my frenzy with restraint; Or check my lamentation while I live. Dear friend, kind women of true Argive breed, Say, who can timely counsel give Or word of comfort suited to my need? Beyond all care shall this my cause be known. No counsels more! Ah leave, Vain comforters, and let me grieve With ceaseless pain, unmeasured in my moan.

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.

The man who to untimely death is doomed Vainly would hedge him in from the assault of harm; He bears the seed of ruin in himself.

Beni bırakın, bırakın, teselliye ihtiyacım yok, zira ıstırabımın düğümleri çözülmez, ıstıraplarımın sonu yoktur, inlemelerim öylesine sonsuz.

Though I'm on my own, it will be done, because it must be.

Bu durumda dostlarım, ne akıllı ne dindar olmak mümkündür; kötülüğün içinde bizi kötülüğe zorlayan güç çok büyüktür.

On the other hand, much that at first sight seems primitive in Greek tragedy belongs more to the subject than to the mode of handling. The age of Pericles was in advance of that in which the legends were first Hellenized and humanized, just as this must have been already far removed from the earliest stages of mythopoeic imagination. The reader of Aeschylus or Sophocles should therefore be warned against attributing to the poet’s invention that which is given in the fable.

Electra spends the entirety of Sophocles’s play in a doorway, I say to my students, when we read his Theban trilogy in my Adaptations course. She is unable to return home and unable to venture into the world. Pay attention to doorways, to paths, to in-between spaces, I tell them, these are the places of transformation. The