Playwrights From Greece

"Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path."

"Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break."

"General, the battle draws to a close and I make my report. This is where and how I fought. I fell wounded, lost heart, but did not desert. Though my teeth clattered from fear, I bound my forehead tightly with a red handkerchief to hide the blood, and ran to the assault. Before you shall pluck out the precious feathers of my jackdaw soul, one by one, until it remains a tiny clod of earth kneaded with blood, sweat, and tears. I shall relate my struggle to you — in order to unburden myself. I shall cast off virtue, shame, and truth — in order to unburden myself. My soul resembles your creation "Toledo in the Storm"; girded by yellow thunderbolts and oppressive black clouds, fighting a desperate, unbending battle against both light and darkness. You will see my soul, will weigh it between your lanceolate eyebrows, and will judge. Do you remember the grave Cretan saying, "Return where you have failed, leave where you have succeeded"? If I failed, I shall return to the assault though but a single hour of life remains to me. If I succeeded, I shall open the earth so that I may come and recline at your side. Listen, therefore, to my report, general, and judge. Listen to my life, grandfather, and if I fought with you, if I fell wounded and allowed no one to learn of my suffering, if I never turned my back to the enemy: Give me your blessing!"

"Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive."

""Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality," says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life."

"I thank God that this refreshing childhood vision still lives inside me in all its fullness of color and sound. This is what keeps my mind untouched by wastage, keeps it from withering and running dry. It is the sacred drop of immortal water which prevents me from dying. When I wish to speak of the sea, woman, or God in my writing, I gaze down in my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. He dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of the sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes."

"Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons."

"A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. … Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. … that by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song."

"I felt that human partitions — bodies, brains, and souls — were capable of being demolished, and that humanity might return again, after frightfully bloody wandering, to its primeval, divine oneness. In this condition, there is no such thing as "me", "you", and "he"; everything is a unity and this unity is a profound mystic intoxication in which death loses its scythe and ceases to exist. Separately, we die one by one, but all together we are immortal. Like prodigal sons, after so much hunger, thirst, and rebellion, we spread our arms and embrace our two parents: heaven and earth."

"Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards."

"How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. … No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely."

"As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough."

"One day our Sodom and Gomorrah would be trampled by some all-powerful foot, and this world which laughed, reveled, and forgot God would be transformed, in its turn, into a Dead Sea. At the end of every period God's foot comes along in this way and tramples the cities of the overindulged belly, the overdeveloped mind. I felt afraid (Sometimes it seems to me that this world is another Sodom and Gomorrah just before God's passage above it. I think the terrible foot can already be heard approaching)."

"Sodom and Gomorrah reclined along the riverbank like two whores kissing each other. Men copulated with other men, women with other women, men with mares, women with bulls. They ate and overate from the Tree of Life; they ate and overate from the Tree of Knowledge. Smashing their sacred statues, they saw that they were filled with air. Coming very, very close to God, they said, "This God is not the father of Fear, he is the son of Fear," and they lost their fear. On the four gates to the city they wrote in large yellow letters, THERE IS NO GOD HERE. What does There is no God mean? It means there is no bridle on our instincts, no reward for good or punishment for evil, no virtue, shame, or justice — that we are wolves and she-wolves in heat."

"The nobly born must nobly meet his fate."

"Waste not fresh tears over old griefs."

"Ἡδύ τοι σωθέντα μεμνῆσθαι πόνων."

"ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς ἔρωτα πίπτουσιν βροτῶν ἐσθλῶν ὅταν τύχωσι τῶν ἐρωμένων οὐκ ἔσθ' ὁποίας λείπεται τῆς ἡδονῆς."

"Woman is woman's natural ally."

"Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife."

"Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain."

"Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account."

"Φησίν τις εἶναι δῆτ᾽ ἐν οὐρανῷ θεούς; οὐκ εἰσίν, οὐκ εἴσ᾽, εἴ τις ἀνθρώπων θέλει μὴ τῷ παλαιῷ μῶρος ὢν χρῆσθαι λόγῳ. σκέψασθε δ᾽ αὐτοί, μὴ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς λόγοις γνώμην ἔχοντες. φήμ᾽ ἐγὼ τυραννίδα κτείνειν τε πλείστους κτημάτων τ᾿ ἀποστερεῖν ὅρκους τε παραβαίνοντας ἐκπορθεῖν πόλεις· καὶ ταῦτα δρῶντες μᾶλλόν εἰσ᾽ εὐδαίμονες. τῶν εὐσεβούντων ἡσυχῇ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν. πόλεις τε μικρὰς οἶδα τιμώσας θεούς, αἳ μειζόνων κλύουσι δυσσεβεστέρων λόγχης ἀριθμῷ πλείονος κρατούμεναι. οἶμαι δ᾽ ἂν ὑμᾶς, εἴ τις ἀργὸς ὢν θεοῖς εὔχοιτο καὶ μὴ χειρὶ συλλέγοι βίον, μαθεῖν ἂν ὡς οὐκ εἰσίν. αἱ δ᾽ εὐπραξίαι τὰ θεῖα πυργοῦσ᾽ αἱ κακαί τε συμφοραί."

"Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lends aid."

"Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame."

"A bad ending follows a bad beginning."

"Cowards do not count in battle; they are there, but not in it."

"A woman should be good for everything at home, but abroad good for nothing."

"Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world."

"Every man is like the company he is wont to keep."

"Ὦ φιλόζωοι βροτοὶ, οἱ τὴν ἐπιστείχουσαν ἡμέραν ἰδεῖν οὕτως ἔρως βροτοῖσιν ἐγκεῖται βίου"

"Τίς δ᾽ οἶδεν εἰ ζῆν τοῦθ᾽ ὁ κέκληται θανεῖν, τὸ ζῆν δὲ θνῄσκειν ἐστί"

"Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future."

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

"Πᾶσιν γὰρ εὖ φρονοῦσι συμμαχεῖ τύχη."

""Η τοῖσιν εὐφρονοῦσι συμμαχεῖ τύχη."

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

"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."

"ἡ γὰρ σιωπὴ τοῖς σοφοῖσ ἀπόκρισις."

"Σοφὸς ἦν τις, ὃς τὸ θεῖον εἰσηγήσατο."

"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."

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

"Account no man happy till he dies."

"Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Κούφα σοι χθὼν ἐπάνωθε πέσοι."