Sophocles

One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.

I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.

Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not help himself.

How dangerous can false reasoning prove!

Is anyone in all the world safe from unhappiness?

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.

There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird,When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone." - Sentry

Without labor nothing prospers.

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

Hail the sun! the brightest of all that everDawned on the City of Seven Gates, City of Thebes!Hail the golden dawn over Dirce's riverRising to speed the flight of the white invaders Homeward in full retreat!" - Chorus

We long to have again the vanished past, in spite of all its pain.

OEDIPUS: Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many- may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearthI pray that I myself may feel my curse. On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken.

TEIRESIAS:I tell you, king, this man, this murderer(whom you have long declared you are in search of,indicting him in threatening proclamationas murderer of Laius)- he is here.In name he is a stranger among citizensbut soon he will be shown to be a citizentrue native Theban, and he'll have no joyof the discovery: blindness for sightand beggary for riches his exchange,he shall go journeying to a foreign countrytapping his way before him with a stick.He shall be proved father and brother bothto his own children in his house; to herthat gave him birth, a son and husband both;a fellow sower in his father's bedwith that same father that he murdered.Go within, reckon that out, and if you find memistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy.

CHORUS:You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.

OEDIPUS:O, O, O, they will all come,all come out clearly! Light of the sun, let melook upon you no more after today!I who first saw the light bred of a matchaccursed, and accursed in my livingwith them I lived with, cursed in my killing.

TEIRESIAS: Alas, how terrible is wisdom whenit 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 arein sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.Do you know who your parents are? Unknowingyou are enemy to kith and kinin death, beneath the earth, and in this life.