Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright and is widely regarded as the father of tragedy. He wrote over 70 plays, many of which are still performed today, including the Oresteia trilogy. He is also known for his thought–provoking quotes, which have been inspiring people for centuries. Here is a collection of some of the most famous and inspiring Aeschylus Quotes.
Aeschylus Quotes
🔳“Call no man happy till he is dead.”
🔳“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget”
🔳“For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one’s life.”
🔳“For somehow this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends.”
🔳“Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.”
🔳“His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.”
🔳“I gave them hope, and so turned away their eyes from death”
🔳“I know how men in exile feed on dreams”
🔳“In war, the first casualty is truth.”
🔳“In war, truth is the first casualty.”
🔳“It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.”
🔳“It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.”
🔳“It’s not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath”
🔳“Memory is the mother of all wisdom. ”
🔳“My will is mine…I shall not make it soft for you.”
🔳“Nothing forces us to know”
🔳“Oh, the torment bred in the race,”
🔳“Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers”
🔳“Rumours voiced by women come to nothing.”
🔳“She looked just like a painting dying to speak.”
🔳“Suffering brings experience.”
🔳“Tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
🔳“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”
🔳“There is no avoidance in delay.”
🔳“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”
🔳“They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn”
🔳“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”
🔳“To learn is to be young, however old.”
🔳“Wisdom comes through suffering.”
🔳“Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?”
Aeschylus Quotes About Death
🔳“A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life’s end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom.”
🔳“But when once the earth has sucked up a dead man’s blood, there is no way to raise him up.”
“Call no man happy till he is dead.”
🔳“For a single path leads to the house of Hades.
🔳“Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts.”
🔳“Pain lays not its touch upon a corpse.”
🔳“Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Earth
🔳“But when once the earth has sucked up a dead man’s blood, there is no way to raise him up.”
🔳“For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things.”
🔳“For this our task hath Fate spun without fail to last for ever sure, that we on man weighed down with deeds of hate should follow till the earth his life immure. Nor when he dies can he boast of being truly free.”
🔳“No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind’s whirling wrath.”
🔳“On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy”
“Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.”
🔳“The air is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven, Zeus all that is, and what transcends them all.”
🔳“The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite.”
🔳“The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter’s gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom.”
🔳“You’ll see all other mortal sinners, the ones who flout the honor owed to gods or guests, or loving parents–you’ll see them get the justice they deserve. For Hades holds men mightily to a strict accounting down below the earth; he sees all things, inscribes them within the book of his remembering.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Heart
🔳“Bronze is the mirror of form, wine of the heart.”
🔳“For in the voyage of the heart, there is a freight of hatred, and the wind of wrath blows shrill.”
🔳“For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another’s happiness.”
🔳“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”
🔳“In every tyrant’s heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.”
“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.”
🔳“There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.”
🔳“Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast, He dieth not, unless the appointed time, The limit of his life’s span, coincide;”
🔳“Nor does the man who by the hearth at home Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Honor
🔳“To you, the clever and crafty, bitter beyond all bitterness, who has sinned against the gods in bestowing honors upon creatures of a day–to you, thief of fire, I speak.”
🔳“Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend’s success without envy.”
🔳“It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.”
🔳“Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.”
🔳“Many among men are they who set high the show of honor, yet break justice.”
🔳“Many men who transgress justice, honor appearance over reality.”
🔳“There’s only few people who have strength to honor someone’s achievement without envy.”
🔳“You’ll see all other mortal sinners, the ones who flout the honor owed to gods or guests, or loving parents–you’ll see them get the justice they deserve. For Hades holds men mightily to a strict accounting down below the earth; he sees all things, inscribes them within the book of his remembering.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Justice
🔳“There are two sides to this dispute. I’ve heard only one half the argument. (…) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once”
🔳“I’ve picked the finest men in Athens, I’ll return. They’ll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.
For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things.”
🔳“For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.”
🔳“Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.”
🔳“Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.”
“Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.”
🔳“Justice, voiceless, unseen, seeth thee when thou sleepest and” when thou goest forth and when thou liest down. Continually doth she attend thee, now aslant thy course, now at a later time.”
🔳“These lines are from a section of doubtful or spurious fragments.”
🔳“On him who wields power gently, the god looks favorably from afar.”
🔳“The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance.”
🔳“The man who boldly transgresses, amassing a great heap unjustly–by force, in time, he will strike his sail, when trouble seizes him as the yardarm is splintered. He calls on those who hear nothing and he struggles in the midst of the whirling waters.”
🔳“The god laughs at the hot-headed man, seeing him, who boasted that this would never happen, exhausted by distress without remedy and unable to surmount the cresting wave. He wrecks the happiness of his earlier life on the reef of Justice, and he perishes unwept, unseen.”
🔳“When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?”
🔳“You’ll see all other mortal sinners, the ones who flout the honor owed to gods or guests, or loving parents–you’ll see them get the justice they deserve. For Hades holds men mightily to a strict accounting down below the earth; he sees all things, inscribes them within the book of his remembering.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Literature
🔳“By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water.”
🔳“Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another’s might.”
🔳“Don’t you know this, that words are doctors to a diseased temperment?”
🔳“For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another’s happiness.”
🔳“God always strives together with those who strive.”
🔳“God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard.”
🔳“He who goes unenvied shall not be admired.”
🔳“I know how men in exile feed on dreams.”
🔳“I say you must not win an unjust case by oaths.”
“I would rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evils.”
🔳“In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house.”
🔳“It is always in season for old men to learn.”
🔳“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”
🔳“Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.”
🔳“Mourn for me rather as living than as dead.”
🔳“The wisest of the wise may err.”
🔳“The words of truth are simple.”
🔳“There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.”
🔳“We shall perish by guile just as we slew.”
🔳“What good is it to live a life that brings pains?”
🔳“What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?”
🔳“Whenever a man makes haste, God too hastens with him.”
🔳“Wisdom comes alone through suffering.”
🔳“You have been trapped in the inescapable net of ruin by your own want of sense.”
Aeschylus Quotes About Pain
🔳“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget…”
🔳“For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one’s life.”
🔳“For sufferers it is sweet to know before-hand clearly the pain that still remains for them.”
🔳“In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain.”
🔳“Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain”
🔳“O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.”
🔳“Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.”
🔳“Pain lays not its touch upon a corpse.”
🔳“The reward of pain is experience.”
🔳“The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering.”
🔳“Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are,”
🔳“Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.”
🔳“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”
🔳“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”
🔳“What good is it to live a life that brings pains?”
🔳“Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime’s length?”
🔳“Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?”
Aeschylus Quotes About Suffering Most Famous
🔳“For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow: it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.”
🔳“For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one’s life.”
🔳“For sufferers it is sweet to know before-hand clearly the pain that still remains for them.”
🔳“For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another’s happiness.”
🔳“For wherein is life sweet to him who suffers grief?”
🔳“I have been schooled by my own suffering: I’ve learned the many ways of being purged.”
🔳“It is through suffering that learning comes.”
🔳“Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.”
🔳“Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.”
🔳“Making it a valid law to learn by suffering.”
🔳“Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.”
🔳“Only through suffering do we learn.”
🔳“Still to the sufferer comes, as due from God, a glory that to suffering owes its birth.”
🔳“The reward of suffering is experience.”
🔳“The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering.”
🔳“Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are,”
🔳“Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Those who would learn must suffer. In our own despair, against our will, wisdom comes to us.”
🔳“Wisdom comes alone through suffering.”
Quotes to Live By Aeschylu
🔳“Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.”
🔳“It is best for the wise man not to seem wise.”
🔳“Memory is the mother of all wisdom.”
🔳“Nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know.”
🔳“And this is how the gods declare their love.”
🔳“Search well and be wise, nor believe that self-willed pride will ever be better than good counsel.”
🔳“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.”
🔳“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”
🔳“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”
🔳“To learn is to be young, however old.”
🔳“You shall learn, though late, the lesson of how to be discreet.”
Quotes on Treachery and Happiness
🔳“For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another’s happiness.”
🔳“For somehow this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends.”
🔳“I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.”
🔳“It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
🔳“And one who is just of his own free will shall not lack for happiness; and he will never come to utter ruin.”
Short Aeschylus Quotes that will Make You Think
🔳“I know how men in exile feed on dreams.”
🔳“Time brings all things to pass.His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.”
🔳“The man whose authority is recent is always stern.God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.”
Aeschylus Quotes on Women
🔳“She looked just like a painting dying to speak.”
🔳“Wiles and deceit are female qualities.”
🔳“Rumours voiced by women come to nothing.”
Verdict
Aeschylus Quotes are a testament to the timelessness of his wisdom. His words are still relevant today and provide a valuable insight into human nature and the world around us. Aeschylus’ views on justice, honor, and courage remain a source of inspiration for generations to come. His words are a reminder that we are all capable of greatness and that we should never give up on our dreams.