Euripides

Euripides was a Greek playwright.

Sourced

• The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.
  • Ægeus, Frag. 7

• Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.
  • Æolus Frag. 38.

• Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
  • Alexander Frag. 44

• Sweet is the remembrance of troubles when you are in safety.
  • Andromeda

• Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days.
  • Bacchæ l. 395

• Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
  • Bacchæ l. 480
  • Variant translation: To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.

• Slow but sure moves the might of the gods.
  • Bacchæ l. 882
  • Variant translation: Slowly but surely withal moveth the might of the gods.

• Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven — of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.
  • Bacchæ l. 1150

• 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.
  • Bellerophon, Fragment 298; quoted in Plutarch's Morals : Ethical Essays (1888) edited and translated by Arthur Richard Shilleto, p. 293

• I sacrifice to no god save myself — And to my belly, greatest of deities.
  • The Cyclops (c.424-23 B.C.)

• 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.
  • Electra (413 B.C.)

• God helps him who strives hard.
  • Eumenidoe

• Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
  • Helen (412 BC), as translated by Richmond Lattimore

• In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.
  • Heraclidae (c 428 BC); quoted by Aristophanes in The Wasps.

• Leave no stone unturned.
  • Heraclidae (c 428 BC)

• I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity.
  • Hercules Furens l. 281

• O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!
  • Ion (c. 421-408 BC) l. 238

• Authority is never without hate.
  • Ion (c. 421-408 BC) as translated by Ronald F. Willetts.

• A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.
  • Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 114

• There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.
  • Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 721

• The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards.
  • Medea

• It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.
  • Medea, line 964

• A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
  • Variant: A bad ending follows a bad beginning.
  • Melanippe the Wise (fragment)

• Cowards do not count in battle; they are there, but not in it.
  • Meleager Frag. 523

• Every man is like the company he wont to keep.
  • Phœnix Frag. 809

• This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
  • Variant: Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.
  • The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)

• Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.
  • Variant: Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgement.
  • Pirithous

• Where two discourse, if the one's anger rise,
  The man who lets the contest fall is wise.
  • Protesilaus Frag. 656

• Slight not what 's near through aiming at what's far.
  • Rhesus (c. 435 BC) line 482

• I think,
  Some shrewd man first, a man in judgment wise,
  Found for mortals the fear of gods,
  Thereby to frighten the wicked should they
  Even act or speak or scheme in secret.
  • Sisyphus, as translated by R. G. Bury, and revised by J. Garrett.
  • Variant translation: He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.

• The sweetest teaching did he introduce,
  Concealing truth under untrue speech.
  The place he spoke of as the gods' abode
  Was that by which he might awe humans most, —
  The place from which, he knew, terrors came to mortals
  And things advantageous in their wearisome life —
  The revolving heaven above, in which dwell
  The lightnings, and awesome claps
  Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,
  Beautiful and intricate by that wise craftsman Time, —
  From which, too, the meteor's glowing mass speeds
  And wet thunderstorm pours forth upon the earth.
  • Sisyphus as translated by R. G. Bury, and revised by J. Garrett

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

• There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.
  • Suppliants

• 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.
  • Temenidæ Frag. 734

Alcestis (438 B.C.)

• Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.
  • l. 238

• A second wife is hateful to the children of the first; A viper is not more hateful.
  • l. 309

• Oh, if I had Orpheus' voice and poetry
  with which to move the Dark Maid and her Lord,
  I'd call you back, dear love, from the world below.
  I'd go down there for you. Charon or the grim
  King's dog could not prevent me then
  from carrying you up into the fields of light.
  • l. 358

• Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.
  • l. 462

• Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.
  • l. 669.

• Dishonour will not trouble me, once I am dead.
  • l. 726

• Today's today. Tomorrow we may be
  ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.
  • l. 788

• I have found power in the mysteries of thought,
  exaltation in the changing of the Muses;
  I have been versed in the reasonings of men;
  but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.
  • l. 962

• Time cancels young pain.
  • l. 1085

Hippolytus (428 B.C.)

• There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course: a quiet conscience.
  • l. 435

• Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lend aid.
  • Frag. 435

• In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.
  • l. 435, as translated by David Grene
  • Variant translations: Among mortals second thoughts are the wisest.
    Second thoughts are ever wiser.
    Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

• 'Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore.
  • l. 612, as translated by Gilbert Murray (1954).
  • Variant: My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged.
  • As translated by David Grene

• Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.

Orestes (408 BC)

• Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
  • l. 298, as translated by William Arrowsmith

• When one with honeyed words but evil mind
  Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
  • l. 907

• The man who melts with social sympathy, though not allied, is more worth than a thousand kinsmen.

• The variety of all things forms a pleasure.

Misattributed

• Account no man happy till he dies.
  • Sophocles in Oedipus Rex
  • Variant in Herodotus 1.32: Count no man happy until he is dead.

• Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.
  • Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
  • Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

• Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
  • Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a "heathen proverb" in Daniel, a Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott. The origin of the misattribution to Euripides is unknown. Several variants are quoted in ancient texts, as follows.
  • Variants and derived paraphrases:
    • For cunningly of old
      was the celebrated saying revealed:
      evil sometimes seems good
      to a man whose mind
      a god leads to destruction.
      • Sophocles, Antigone 620-3, a play pre-dating any of Euripides' surviving plays. An ancient commentary explains the passage as a paraphrase of the following, from another, earlier poet.
    • When a god plans harm against a man,
      he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.
      • Quoted in the scholia vetera to Sophocles' Antigone 620ff., without attribution. The meter (iambic trimeter) suggests that the source of the quotation is a tragic play.
    • For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone,
      it first does this: it steals away his mind
      and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness,
      so that he should know nothing of his mistakes.
      • Attributed to "some of the old poets" by Lycurgus of Athens in his Oratio In Leocratem [Oration Against Leocrates], section 92. Again, the meter suggests that the source is a tragic play. These lines are misattributed to the much earlier semi-mythical statesman Lycurgus of Sparta in a footnote of recent editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and other works.
    • The gods do nothing until they have blinded the minds of the wicked.
      • Variant in 'Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), compiled by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 433.
    • Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
      • Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911
    • The devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
      • As quoted by Athenagoras of Athens
    • quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius.
      • "Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; neo-Latin version. "A maxim of obscure origin which may have been invented in Cambridge about 1640" -- Taylor, The Proverb (1931). Probably a variant of the line "He whom the gods love dies young", derived from Menander's play The Double Deceiver via Plautus (Bacchides 816-7).
    • quem (or quos) Deus perdere vult, dementat prius.
      • "Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad." -- A Christianised version of the above.
    • Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
      • This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    • Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
      • As quoted in George Fox Interpreted: The Religion, Revelations, Motives and Mission of George Fox (1881) by Thomas Ellwood Longshore, p. 154
    • Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
      • As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th edition (1992)
    • Nor do the gods appear in warrior's armour clad
      To strike them down with sword and spear
      Those whom they would destroy
      They first make mad.
      • Bhartṛhari, 7th c. AD; as quoted in John Brough,Poems from the Sanskrit, (1968), p, 67
  • Modern derivatives:
    The proverb's meaning is changed in many English versions from the 20th and 21st centuries that start with the proverb's first half (through "they") and then end with a phrase that replaces "first make mad" or "make mad." Such versions can be found at Internet search engines by using either of the two keyword phrases that are on Page 2 and Page 4 of the webpage "Pick any Wrong Card." The rest of that webpage is frameworks that induce a reader to compose new variations on this proverb.