Teiresias Quotes

TEIRESIAS: 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.

TEIRESIAS: You have your eyes but see not where you are in sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with. Do you know who your parents are? Unknowing you are enemy to kith and kin in death, beneath the earth, and in this life.

The lives of such characters as Heracles, Daedalus, Teiresias, and Phineus span several generations, because these are titles rather than names of particular heroes.

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.

Cadmus: Shall we alone of all the city dance in Bacchus' honor? Teiresias: Yea, for we alone are wise, the rest are mad.

Teiresias: Yes well, what is it they say, you’re as young as you feel? Kadmos: We must get to the mountain. Should we call a cab? Teiresias: That doesn’t sound very Dionysian. Kadmos: Good point. Let’s walk.

Bakkhai: Might be a good idea, if it’s not too much bother, to show more respect for your old grandfather. Not to mention the gods. Teiresias: You’re bold and loud and glib, Pentheus, you should have been a lawyer. But you totally lack common sense. This “new invented daimon” you laugh at — take my word for it — he’s not one to laugh at. He’s going to be big.

But for now, if we have been right in how we investigated and what we said, virtue turns out to be neither innate nor earned. It is something that comes to those who possess it as a free gift from the gods – with understanding not included; unless, that is, you can point to some statesmen who could make another man a statesman. If there were such a one, he could be said to rank among the living as Homer said Teiresias ranked among the dead: namely, ‘he alone kept his wits collected while the others flitted about like shadows.’ In the same way such a man would, as far as virtue is concerned, stand forth as someone of substance – opposed, as it were, to mere shadows. M: I think that is an excellent way to put it, Socrates S: It follows from this whole line of reasoning, Meno, that virtue appears present in those who have it only as a gift from the gods. We will only really know about this, however, if and when we try to investigate what virtue itself is – an investigation that must come before that of how it comes to be in men. But the time has come for me to go.

Suçlu tanrıların olduğu bir evrende asıl suç, suçsuz olmaktır!

The life of the ordinary man is the best and most prudent choice. Cease from the folly of metaphysical speculation and inquiry into origins and ends; count all this clever logic as idle talk, and pursue one end alone-how you may do what your hand finds to do, and go your way with never a passion and always a smile.