Oedipus Rex Quotes

To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away

I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.

Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.

Time, which sees all things, has found you out.

How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be When there’s no help in truth.

Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that's wise! This I knew well, but had forgotten it, else I would not have come here.

The tyrant is a child of Pride Who drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity, Until from his high crest headlong He plummets to the dust of hope.

Oblivion - what a blessing...for the mind to dwell a world away from pain.

The truth is what I cherish and that's my strength

...count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.

How terrible-- to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!

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.

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

All my care is you, and all my pleasure yours.

In time you will know this well: For time, and time alone, will show the just man, though scoundrels are discovered in a day.

Let every man in mankind's frailty consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he find Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

Those who jump to conclusions may go wrong.

All men make mistakes.

Weep not, everything must have its day.

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

Whatever is sought for can be caught, you know, whatever is neglected slips away.

Never honor the gods in one breath and take the gods for fools the next.

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

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

It's perfect justice: natures like yours are hardest on themselves.

Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.

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.

And if you find I've lied, from this day on call the prophet blind.

In matters where I have no cognizance I hold my tongue.

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

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. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

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

I am free! for I have in me the strength of truth.

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.

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

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.

(...) I, for one, prize less The name of king than deeds of kingly power; And so would all who learn in wisdom’s school.

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

What is God singing in his profound Delphi of gold and shadow?

A sight to touch e’en hatred’s self with pity.

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

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

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.

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

For time alone shews a man's honesty, But in one day you may discern his guilt.

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

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

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

The dead alone feel no pain.

...Time, sweeping through its rounds, gives birth to infinite nights and days...

It is not in words that I should wish my life to be distinguished, but rather in things done.

Commit cruelty on a person long enough and the mind begins to go.

Ah! terrible is knowledge to the man Whom knowledge profits not.

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.

In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!

And remember that the captor is now the captive; the hunter is in the snare. What was won by stealth will not be kept.

Alas! how terrible it is to know, Where no good comes of knowing!

The griefs we cause ourselves cut deepest of all.

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?

Though he has watched a decent age pass by, A man will sometimes still desire the world. I swear I see no wisdom in that man. The endless hours pile up a drift of pain More unrelieved each day; and as for pleasure, When he is sunken in excessive age, You will not see his pleasure anywhere. - Choral Poem between Scenes V & VI, Oedipus at Colonus

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

Alas for the seed of man.

Who would choose uneasy dreams to don a crown when all the kingly sway can be enjoyed without?

Keep your eyes on that last days, on your dying. Happiness and peace, they were not yours unless at death you can look back on your life and say I lived, I did not suffer.

Wise words; but O, when wisdom brings no profit, To be wise is to suffer.

I only ask to live, with pure faith keeping In word and deed that Law which leaps the sky, Made of no mortal mould, undimmed, unsleeping Whose living godhead does not age or die.

** همه ی مردان دیوانه اند ایگور استراوینسکی اپرای رکس پروگرس

فرد تنها هنگامی احساس رهایی می کند که نه در قید احساسش باشد، نه منطقش ایگور استراوینسکی اپرای رکس پروگرس*

Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say— I hope that I shall never want to say!— that you Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful. You are not in a position to know everything That people say or do, or what they feel: Your temper terrifies them—everyone Will tell you only what you like to hear.

Look and learn all citizens of Thebes. This is Oedipus. He, who read the famous riddle, and we hailed chief of men, All envied his power, glory, and good fortune. Now upon his head the sea of disaster crashes down. Mortality is man’s burden. Keep your eyes fixed on your last day. Call no man happy until he reaches it, and finds rest from suffering.

Men are of little worth. Their brief lives last a single day. They cannot hold elusive pleasure fast; It melts away. All laurels wither; all illusions fade; Hopes have been phantoms, shade on air-built shade, since time began.

KREON. Ich gehe, von dir verkannt, gerecht jedoch vor diesen.

Walls, towers, and ships, they all are nothing with no men to keep the wall.

Oedipus: (looking up at the sun) 'LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT never again flood these eyes with your white radiance, oh gods my eyes.

A man through wit May pass another’s wisdom in the race.

tis greater far To rule a people than a wilderness.

Like a star his envied fortune mounted beaming far and wide: Now he sinks in seas of anguish, whelmed beneath a raging tide.

If thou dost count a virtue stubbornness, Unschooled by reason, thou art much astray.

هر نسلی از آدمیان به نیستی می‌گراید. مردی را به من بنمایید که سعادت او از رؤیائی خوش که بیداری تلخ گونه‌ای در پی دارد، برتر باشد.

Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.

What was that line of Sophocles from Oedipus Rex? “How awful a knowledge of the truth can be.

Creon: You consider it right for a man of my years and experience To go to school to a boy? Haimon: It is not right If I am wrong. But if I am young, and right, What does my age matter?

Am I all evil, then? It must be so. If I was created so, born to this fate, who could deny the savagery of God? May I never see that day! Never! Rather let me vanish from the race of men Than know the abomination destined me!

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.

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.

Oedipus Rex vs. Tyrannosaurus Rex Oedipus Rex, a tragedy by Sophocles, chronicles the story of Oedipus, a man who becomes the king of Thebes while in the process unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would murder his pops Laius and marry his mom Jocasta. Tyrannosaurus Rex , commonly abbreviated to T. Rex, was a big fucking dinosaur that kicked ass during the Jurassic period. My point? My point is there doesn't have to be a point if you have already hooked the reader with a catchy title. And the winner is... Steven Spielberg

El que no tiene temor ante los hechos tampoco tiene miedo a la palabra.

ÖDIPUS. Wie packt mich, da ich eben dich gehört hab, Frau, der Seele Irrlauf und Erschütterung des Geistes!

IOKASTE. So ging das Gerücht und ist noch nicht verstummt.

Chorus: 'man after man after man o mortal generations here once almost not here what are we dust ghosts images a rustling of air nothing nothing we breathe on the abyss we are the abyss our happiness no more than traces of a dream the high noon sun sinking into the sea the red spume of its wake raining behind it we are you we are you Oedipus dragging your maimed foot in agony and now that I see your life finally revealed your life fused with the god blazing out of the black nothingness of all we know I say no happiness lasts nothing human lasts

Even harder to admit is how depressed I was. As the social stigma of depression disappears, the aesthetic stigma increases. It’s not just that depression has become fashionable to the point of banality. It’s the sense that we live in a reductively binary culture: you’re either healthy or you’re sick, you either function or you don’t. And if that flattening of the field of possibilities is precisely what’s depressing you, you’re inclined to resist participating in the flattening by calling yourself depressed. You decide that it’s the world that’s sick,, and that the resistance of refusing to function in such a world is healthy. You embrace what clinicians call “depressive realism.” It’s what the chorus in Oedipus Rex sings: “Alas, ye generations of men, how mere a shadow do I count your life! Where, where is the mortal who wins more of happiness than just the seeming, and, after the semblance, a falling away?” You are, after all, just protoplasm, and some day you’ll be dead. The invitation to leave your depression behind, whether through medication or therapy or effort of will, seems like an invitation to turn your back on all your dark insights into the corruption and infantilism and selfdelusion of the brave new Me World.

سرآهنگ:بنگرید ای فرزندان تبای، این ادیپوس بزرگتر مردان و رازگشای ژرفترین معماها بود و بهروزی تابناکش محسود همگان.بنگرید که چگونه در گرداب تیره بختی غوطه ور است.پس بدانید که انسان فانی باید همیشه فرجام را بنگرد و هیچکس را نمی توان سعادت دانست مگر آنگاه که قرین سعادت در گور بیارمد

CHOR. Denn weder reifen des herrlichen Landes Früchte noch tauchen bei ihren Geburten aus qualvollen Schmerzen empor die Frauen; doch einen zum andern kannst du sehen gleich gut befiederten Vögeln, jäher als unwiderstehliches Feuer losfliegen dem Strande zu des abenddunkeln Gottes.

ادیپوس:گجسته باد نکوکاری که پاهایم را گشود و برای مرگ، زندگیم بخشید.مرا از دامی به چاهی افکند.برای من و جملۀ کسانم مرگ موهبتی می توانست بود. ادیپوس:اکنون من آنم که خون پدر ریخت و همسر مادر خود شد.کافری از تبار ننگ با فرزندانی از پشت برادر. دیگر چه رسوایی است که ادیپوس بدان شهره نباشد؟

Mas o homem que nos atos e palavras se deixa dominar por vão orgulho sem recear a obra da justiça e não cultua propriamente os deuses está fadado a doloroso fim, vítima da arrogância criminosa que o induziu a desmedidos ganhos, a sacrilégios, à loucura máxima de profanar até as coisas santas.

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")

ادیپوس: آه! آیا در کشاکش زندگی،دارایی و پادشاهی و هوشیاری بی بدیل باید همیشه محسود باشد؟ آیا کرئن، این دوست دیرین که بیشتر از هر دوستی اعتماد من بدوست، باید دزدانه کمین کند و بکوشد تا مرا از قدرتی که این شهر نه به خواهشی بلکه به دلخواه به من ارزانی داشته است، فرو کشد؟آیا باید این دسیسه کار، این کاسبکار نیرنگ های پرفریب و جادوگرانه را که در سود خویش دیدگانی گشاده و در پیامگزاری چشمانی کور دارد بر من بگمارد؟

All kinds of things are happening to me." I begin. ,,Some I choose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other any more. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense od who I am. It's as if my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch. Oshima gazes deep into m eyes. "Listen, Kafka. What you are experiencing now is the motif od many Greek tragedies. Man does not chose fate. Fate chooses man. That is the basic world view of Greek drama. And the sense od tragedy - according to Aristotle - somes, ironically enough, not drom the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I am 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 lazines or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.

EDIPO - Non venirmi più a dire che non ho fatto ciò che era meglio, non darmi più consigli. Io non so con quali occhi, vedendo, avrei guardato mio padre, una volta disceso nell'Ade, o la misera madre: verso entrambi ho commesso atti, per cui non sarebbe bastato impiccarmi. O forse potevo desiderare la vista dei figli, nati come nacquero? No davvero, mai, per i miei occhi; e neppure la città, né le mura, né le sacre immagini degli dèi: di tutto ciò io sventuratissimo, l'uomo più illustre fra i Tebani, privai me stesso, proclamando che tutti scacciassero l'empio, l'individuo rivelato agli dèi impuro e figlio di Laio. Dopo avere denunziato così la mia infamia, dovevo guardare a fronte alta questi cittadini? No, affatto: anzi, se fosse stato possibile otturare nelle mie orecchie anche la fonte dell'udito, non avrei esitato a sbarrare del tutto questo misero corpo, così da essere sordo, oltre che cieco. È dolce per l'animo dimorare fuori dai mali. Ahi, Citerone, perché mi accogliesti? Perché, dopo avermi preso, non mi uccidesti subito, così che io non rivelassi mai agli uomini da chi sono nato? O Polibo e Corinto, e voi, che credevo antiche dimore degli avi, quale bellezza colma di male nutrivate in me: ora scopro d'essere uno sventurato, nato da sventurati! O tre strade e nascosta vallata, o querceto e gola alla convergenza delle tre vie, che beveste il sangue di mio padre, il mio, dalle mie stesse mani versato, vi ricordate di me? Quali delitti commisi presso di voi, e quali altri poi, giunto qui, ancora commisi! O nozze, voi mi generaste: e dopo avermi generato suscitaste ancora lo stesso seme, e mostraste padri, fratelli, figli, tutti dello stesso sangue; e spose insieme mogli e madri, e ogni cosa più turpe che esiste fra gli uomini. Ma, poiché ciò che non è bello fare non bisogna neppure dire, nascondetemi al più presto, per gli dèi, via di qui, o uccidetemi, o precipitatemi in mare, dove non mi vedrete mai più. Venite, non disdegnate di toccare un infelice; datemi ascolto, non temete: i miei mali nessun altro mortale può portarli, tranne me. Sofocle, Edipo Re [Esodo]

For clarity's sake, and before going further with this account, I shall identify true aesthetic sorrow a little more closely. Sorrow has the opposite movement to that of pain. So long as one doesn't spoil things out of a misplaced mania for consistency―something I shall prevent also in another way―one may say: the more innocence, the deeper the sorrow. If you press this too far, you destroy the tragic. There is always an element of guilt left over, but it is never properly reflected in the subject; which is why in Greek tragedy the sorrow is so deep. In order to prevent misplaced consistency, I shall merely remark that exaggeration only succeeds in carrying the matter over into another sphere. The synthesis of absolute innocence and absolute guilt is not an aesthetic feature but a metaphysical one. This is the real reason why people have always been ashamed to call the life of Christ a tragedy; one feels instinctively that aesthetic categories do not exhaust the matter. It is clear in another way, too that Christ's life amounts to more than can be exhausted in aesthetic terms, namely from the fact that these terms neutralize themselves in this phenomenon, and are rendered irrelevant. Tragic action always contains an element of suffering, and tragic suffering an element of action; the aesthetic lies in the relativity. The identity of an absolute action and an absolute suffering is beyond the powers of aesthetics and belongs to metaphysics. This identity is exemplified in the life of Christ, for His suffering is absolute because the action is absolutely free, and His action is absolute suffering because it is absolute obedience. The element of guilt that is always left over is, accordingly, not subjectively reflected and this makes the sorrow deep. Tragic guilt is more than just subjective guilt, it is inherited guilt. But inherited guilt, like original sin, is a substantial category, and it is just this substantiality that makes the sorrow deeper. Sophocles' celebrated tragic trilogy, *Oedipus at Colonus*, *Oedipus Rex*, and *Antigone*, turns essentially on this authentic tragic interest. But inherited guilt contains the self-contradiction of being guilt yet not being guilt. The bond that makes the individual guilty is precisely piety, but the guilt which he thereby incurs has all possible aesthetic ambiguity. One might well conclude that the people who developed profound tragedy were the Jews. Thus, when they say of Jehova that he is a jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generations, or one hears those terrible imprecations in the Old Testament, one might feel tempted to look here for the material of tragedy. But Judaism is too ethically developed for this. Jehova's curses, terrible as they are, are nevertheless also righteous punishment. Such was not the case in Greece, there the wrath of the gods has no ethical, but aesthetic ambiguity" (Either/Or).