"Helen: What happened in my heart, to make me leave my home And my own land, to follow where a stranger led? Rail at the goddess; be more resolute than Zeus, Who holds power over all other divinities But is himself the slave of love. Show Aphrodite Your indignation; me, pardon and sympathy. Hecabe: No; Paris was an extremely handsome man – one look, And your appetite became your Aphrodite. Why, Men's lawless lusts are all called love – it's a confusion Easily made."

"Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot; where he is, there are in the first place no laws common to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end."

"For naught is there more sweet unto an aged sire than a daughter's love."

"Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far."

"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change."

"A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger."

"Thou didst bring me forth for all the Greeks in common, not for thyself alone."

"Authority is never without hate."

"O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!"

"Yet do I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity."

"Ares hates those who hesitate."

"Leave no stone unturned."

"Who can decide a plea or judge a speech until he has heard plainly from both sides?"

"Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."

"λόγος γάρ ἐστιν οὐκ ἐμός, σοφὸν δ᾽ ἔπος, δεινῆς ἀνάγκης οὐδὲν ἰσχύειν πλέον."

"On behalf of all those dead who learned their hatred of women long ago, for those who hate them now, for those unborn who shall live to hate them yet, I now declare my firm conviction: neither earth nor ocean produces a creature as savage and monstrous as woman."

"ἁγὼ οὔτινι θύω πλὴν ἐμοὶ, θεοῖσι δ᾽ οὔ, καὶ τῇ μεγίστῃ γαστρὶ τῇδε δαιμόνων."

"I care for riches, to make gifts To friends, or lead a sick man back to health With ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth For daily gladness; once a man be done With hunger, rich and poor are all as one."

"The Bacchæ is a most glorious play. I doubt whether it be not superior to the Medea. It is often very obscure; and I am not sure that I fully understand its general scope. But, as a piece of language, it is hardly equalled in the world. And, whether it was intended to encourage or to discourage fanaticism, the picture of fanatical excitement which it exhibits has never been rivalled."

"The Orestes is one of the very finest plays in the Greek language. Among those of Euripides, I should place it next to the Medea and the Bacchæ. It has some very real faults; but it possesses that strong human interest which neither Æschylus nor Sophocles,—poets in many respects far superior to Euripides,—ever gave to their dramas."

"I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But what a poet! The Medea, the Alcestis, the Troades, the Bacchæ, are alone sufficient to place him in the very first rank."

"Sophocles said that he drew men as they ought to be; Euripides, as they are."

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."

"Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances."

"Account no man happy till he dies."

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."

"Most cunning doctrine did he introduce, The truth concealing under speech untrue. The place he spoke of as the God's abode Was that whereby he could affright men most,— The place from which, he knew, both terrors came And easements unto men of toilsome life— To wit the vault above, wherein do dwell The lightnings, he beheld, and awesome claps Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven, Fair-spangled by that cunning craftsman Time,— Whence, too, the meteor's glowing mass doth speed And liquid rain descends upon the earth."

"Σοφὸς ἦν τις, ὃς τὸ θεῖον εἰσηγήσατο."

"ἡ γὰρ σιωπὴ τοῖς σοφοῖσ ἀπόκρισις."

"When good men die their goodness does not perish, But lives though they are gone. As for the bad, All that was theirs dies and is buried with them."

"Where two discourse, if the one's anger rise, The man who lets the contest fall is wise."

""Η τοῖσιν εὐφρονοῦσι συμμαχεῖ τύχη."

"Πᾶσιν γὰρ εὖ φρονοῦσι συμμαχεῖ τύχη."

"The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."

"Τελεῖται δ' ἐς τὸ πεπρωμένον· οὔθ' ὑποκαίων οὔτ' ἐπιλείβων οὔτε δακρύων ἀπύρων ἱερῶν ὀργὰς ἀτενεῖς παραθέλξει."

"Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light."

"I regard the Oresteia as probably on the whole the greatest spiritual work of man."

"The tragic style of Aeschylus is still imperfect. Now and then its constituents, epic and lyric, are not properly fused. He is often abrupt, immoderate, hard. To succeed him with a more artful tragedy was easy; in his almost superhuman greatness he is likely to remain unexcelled. . . ."

"He raised everything he touched to grandeur. The characters in his hands became heroic; the conflicts became tense and fraught with eternal issues."

"Aeschylus is not impersonal but transpersonal, a believer in fate and moral responsibility at the same time."

"One of the greatest of human compositions."

"The first half of the Eumenides is equal to anything in poetry. The close is also very fine."

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus."

"Aeschylus I define to have been a truly gigantic man (I mean by this much more than the mere trivial figure of elocution usually expressed by the word gigantic), one of the largest characters ever known, and all whose movements are clumsy and huge, like those of a son of Anak. In short, his character is just that of Prometheus himself as he has described him. I know no more pleasant thing than to study Aeschylus. You fancy that you hear the old dumb rocks speaking to you of all things they had been thinking of since the world began, in their wild, savage utterances."

"In war, truth is the first casualty."

"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

"Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen."

"Γνώμης δ᾽ ἀπούσης πῆμα γίγνεται μέγα, βαλοῦσά τ᾽ οἶκον ψῆφος ὤρθωσεν μία."