Quotes from plays CLST Flashcards
(106 cards)
1
Q
My own flesh and blood – dear sister, dear Ismene, how many griefs our father Oedipus handed down!
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
2
Q
Not I, I haven’t heard a word, Antigone.
A
Ismene to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
3
Q
I thought so. That’s why I brought you out here, past the gates, so you could hear in private.
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
4
Q
What’s the matter? Trouble, clearly…you sound so dark, so grim.
A
Ismene to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
5
Q
There you have it. You’ll soon show what you are, worth your breeding, Ismene, or a coward – for all your royal blood.
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
6
Q
Will you lift up his body with these bare hands and lower it with me?
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
7
Q
Why rush to extremes? It’s madness, madness.
A
Ismene to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
8
Q
Even if you should have a change of heart, I’d never welcome you in the labor, not with me. So, do as you like, whatever suits you best – I will bury him myself.
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
9
Q
Even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will lie with the one I love and loved by him– an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer to please the dead than please the living here: in the kingdom down below I’ll lie forever. Do as you like, dishonor the laws the gods hold in honor.
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
10
Q
I’d do them no dishonor…by defy the city?
A
Ismene to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
11
Q
Dear god, shout it from the rooftops. I’ll hate you all the more for silence–tell the world!
A
Antigone to Ismene (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
12
Q
Then go if you must, but rest assured, wild, irrational as you are, my sister, you are truly dear to the ones who love you.
A
Ismene to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
13
Q
My countrymen, the ship of our state is safe. The gods who rocked her, after a long, merciless pounding in the storm, have righted her once more.
A
Creon to the chorus (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
14
Q
Of course you cannot know a man completely, his character, his principles, sense of judgement, not till he’s shown his colors, ruling the people, making laws. Experience, there’s the test.
A
Creon to the chorus (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
15
Q
And whoever places a friend above the good of his own country, he is nothing: I have no use for him. Zeus my witness, Zeus who sees all things, always– I could never stand by silent, watching destruction march against our city.
A
Creon to the chorus (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
16
Q
Only while she voyages true on course can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself. Such are my standards. They make our city great.
A
Creon to the chorus (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
17
Q
There was no mark of a spade, no pickaxe there, no earth turned up.
A
Sentry to Creon (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
18
Q
Not a sign in sight that dogs or wild beasts had worried the body, even torn the skin.
A
Sentry to Creon (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
19
Q
Numberless wonders terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man–
A
Chorus to the audience (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
20
Q
He conquers all, taming with his techniques the prey that roams the cliffs and wild lairs, training the stallion, clamping the yoke across his shaggy neck, and the tireless mountain bull. And speech and thought, quick as the wind and the mood and mind for law that rules the city.
A
Chorus to the audience (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
21
Q
When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods that binds his oaths together he and his city rise high– but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth never think my thoughts, whoever does such things.
A
Chorus to the audience (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
22
Q
Then it happened– suddenly, a whirlwind! Twisting a great dust-storm up from the earth, a black plague of the heavens, filling the plain, ripping the leaves off every tree in sight, choking the air and sky. We squinted hard and took our whipping from the gods.
A
Sentry to Creon (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
23
Q
And she cried out a sharp, piercing cry, like a bird come back to an empty nest, peering into its bed, and all the babies gone… Just so, when she sees the corpse bare she bursts into a long, shattering wail and calls down withering curses on the heads of all who did the work. And she scoops up dry dust, handfuls, quickly, and lifting a fine bronze urn, lifting it high and pouring, she crowns the dead with three full libations.
A
Sentry to Creon (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
24
Q
Believe me, the stiffest stubborn wills fall the hardest; the toughest iron, tempered strong in the white-got fire, you’ll see it crack and shatter first of all. And I’ve known spirited horses you can break with a light bit–proud, rebellious horses. There’s no room for pride, not in a slave, not with the lord and master standing by.
A
Creon to Antigone (In Sophocle’s Antigone)
24
Of course I did. It wasn't Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation-- not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict has such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. They are alive, not just today or yesterday: they live forever, from the first of time, and no one knows when they first saw the light.
Antigone to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
25
Never. Once an enemy, never a friend, not even after death.
Creon to Antigone (In Sophocle's Antigone)
26
I was born to join in love, not hate-- that is my nature.
Antigone to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
27
Her? Don't even mention her-- she no longer exists.
Creon to Ismene (In Sophocle's Antigone)
28
What? You'd kill your own son's bride?
Ismene to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
29
Absolutely: there are other fields for him to plow
Creon to Ismene (In Sophocle's Antigone)
30
Show me the man who rules his household well: I'll show you someone fit to rule the state. That good man, my son, I have every confidence he and he alone can give commands and them too. Staunch in the storm of spears he'll stand his ground, a loyal, unflinching comrade at your side.
Creon to Haemon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
31
"No woman," they say, "ever deserved death less, and such a brutal death for such a glorious action. She, with her own dear brother lying in his blood--she couldn't bear to leave him dead, unburied, food for the wild dogs or wheeling vultures."
Haemon to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
32
Whoever thinks that he alone possesses intelligence, the gift of eloquence, he and no one else, and character too...such men, I tell you, spread them open--you will find them empty. No, it's no disgrace for a man, even a wise man, to learn many things and not to be too rigid. You've seen trees by a raging winter torrent, how many sway with the flood and salvage every twig, but not the stubborn-- they're ripped out, roots and all. Bend or break. The same when a man is sailing: haul your sheets too taut, never given an inch, you'll capsize, and go the rest of the voyage keep up and the rowing-benches under.
Haemon to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
33
Am I to rule this land for others-- or myself?
Creon to Haemon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
34
It's no city at all, owned by one man alone
Haemon to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
35
What? The city is the king's--that's the law
Creon to Haemon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
36
Love, never conquered in battle
Love the plunderer laying waste the rich!
Love standing the night-watch guarding a girl's soft cheek.
Chorus to the audience (In Sophocle's Antigone)
37
Denied my part in the wedding-songs, no wedding-song in the dusk has crowned my marriage--I go to wed the lord of the dark waters
Antigone (In Sophocle's Antigone)
38
No withering illness laid you low, no strokes of the sword-- a law to yourself, alone, no mortal like you, ever, you go down to the halls of Death alive and breathing.
Chorus to Antigone (In Sophocle's Antigone)
39
O tomb, my bridal-bed-- my house, my prison cut in the hollow rock, my everlasting watch! I'll soon be there, soon embrace my own, the great growing family of our dead Persephone has received among her ghosts.
Antigone (In Sophocle's Antigone)
40
What law of the mighty gods have I transgressed? Why look to the heavens any more, tormented as I am? Whom to call, what comrades now? Just think, my reverence only brands me for irreverence! Very well: if this is the pleasure of the gods, once I suffer I will know that I was wrong. But if these men are wrong, let them suffer nothing worse than they mete out to me-- these masters of injustice!
Antigone (In Sophocle's Antigone)
41
And it is you-- your high resolve that sets this plague on Thebes. The public altars and sacred hearths are fouled, one and all, by the birds and dogs with carrion torn from the corpse, the doomstruck son of Oedipus! And so the gods are deaf to our prayers, they spurn the offerings in our hands, the flame of holy flesh.
Tiresias to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
42
A corpse for corpses given in return, since you have thrust to the world below a child sprung for the world above, ruthlessly lodged a living soul within the grave-- then you've robbed the gods below the earth, keeping a dead body here in the bright air, unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites.
Tiresias to Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
43
I know it myself--I'm shaken, torn. It's a dreadful thing to yield...but resist now? Lay my pride bare to the blows of ruin? That's dreadful too.
Creon to Leader of Chorus (In Sophocle's Antigone)
44
What should I do? Tell me...I'll obey.
Creon to Leader of Chorus (In Sophocle's Antigone)
45
the hollow empty bed if the bride of death
Messenger to Eurydice (In Sophocle's Antigone)
46
desperate with himself, suddenly leaning his full weight on the blade, he buried it in his body, halfway to the hilt. And still in his senses, pouring his arms around her, he embraced the girl and breathing hard, releasing a quick rush of blood, bright red on her cheek glistening white. And there he lies, body enfolding body...he has won his bride at last, poor boy, not here but in the houses of the dead.
Messenger to Eurydice (In Sophocle's Antigone)
47
the misery, anguish-- I, I'm churning with it, going under
Creon (In Sophocle's Antigone)
48
Oh my children, the new blood of ancient Thebes, why are you here? Huddling at my altar, praying before me, your branches wound in wool. Our city reeks with the smoke of burning incense, rings with cries for the Healer and wailing for the dead. I thought it wrong, my children, to hear the truth from others, messengers. Here I am myself-- you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus
Oedipus to priests (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
49
Speak up, old man.
Oedipus to a priest (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
50
I'll do anything. I would be blind to misery not to pity my people kneeling at my feet.
Oedipus to a priest (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
51
Thebes is dying
priest to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
52
the plague, the fiery god of fever hurls down on the city, his lightning slashing though us-- raging plague in all its vengeance, devastating the house of Cadmus! And Black Death luxuriates in the raw, wailing miseries of Thebes. Now we pray to you. You cannot equal the gods, your children know that, bending at your altar. But we do rate you first of men, both in the common crises of our lives and face-to-face encounters with the gods.
priest to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
53
You freed us from the Sphinx, you came to Thebes and cut us loose from the bloody tribute we had paid that harsh, brutal singer. We taught you nothing, no skill, no extra knowledge, still you triumphed. A god was with you, so they say, and we believe it-- you lifted up our lives.
So now again, Oedipus, king, we bend to you, your power--we implore you, all of us on our knees: find us strength, rescue! Perhaps you've heard the voice of a god or something from other men, Oedipus...what do you know? The man of experience--you see it every day-- his plans will work in a crisis, his first of all.
priest to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
54
I pity you. I see -- how could I fail to see what longings bring you here? Well I know you are sick to death, all of you, but sick as you are, not one is sick as I. Your pain strikes each of you alone, each in the confines of himself, no other. But my spirit grieves for the city, for myself and all of you. I wasn't asleep, dreaming. You haven't weakened me-- I have wept through the nights, you must know that, groping, laboring over many paths of thought. After a painful search I found one cure: I acted at once. I sent Creon, my wife's own brother, to Delphi-- Apollo the Prophet's oracle-- to learn what I might do or say to save our city.
Oedipus to priests (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
55
But once he returns, then, then I'll be a traitor if I do not do all the god makes clear.
Oedipus to priests (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
56
"Drive the corruption from the land, don't harbor it any longer, past all cure, don't nurse it in your soil--root it out"
Creon to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus) -- citing Apollo's oracle
57
I know-- or so I've heard. I never saw the man myself.
Oedipus to Creon (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
58
The singing, riddling Sphinx. She...persuaded us to let the mystery go and concentrate on what lay at our feet.
Creon to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
59
I am the land's avenger by all rights, and Apollo's champion too
Oedipus to Creon (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
60
But not to assist some distant kinsman, no, for my own sake I'll rid us of this corruption. Whoever killed the king may decide to kill me too, with the same violent hand-- by avenging Laius I defend myself
Oedipus to Creon (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
61
You pray to the gods? Let me grand your prayers. Come, listen to me-- do what the plague demands: you'll find relief and lift your head from the depths. I will speak out now as a stranger to the story, a stranger to the crime.
Oedipus to Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
62
I curse myself as well...if by any chance he proves to be an intimate of our house, here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, may the curse I just called down on him strike me!
Oedipus to Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
63
So I will fight for him as if he were my father, stop at nothing, search the world to lay my hands on the man who shed his blood, the son of Labdacus descended of Polydorus, Cadmus of old and Agent, founder of the line: their power and mine are one.
Oedipus to Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
64
Lord Tiresias sees with the eyes of Lord Apollo. Anyone searching for the truth, my king, might learn from the prophet, clear as day.
Leader of the Chorus to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
65
Rescue yourself, your city, rescue me-- rescue everything infected by the dead. We are in your hands, For a man to help others with all his gifts and native strength: that is the noblest work.
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
66
How terrible-- to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees! I knew it well, but I put it from my mind, else I never would have come.
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
67
What's this? Why so grim, so dire?
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
68
Just send me home. You bear your burdens, I'll bear mine. It's better that way, please believe me.
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
69
Strange response...unlawful, unfriendly too to the state that bred and reared you--you withhold the word of God.
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
70
Nothing! You, you scum of the earth, you'd enrage a heart of stone! You won't talk? Nothing moves you? Out with it, once and for all!
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
71
Who could restrain his anger hearing you? What outrage -- you spurn the city
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
72
It does but not for you, old man. You've lost your power, stone-blind, stone-deaf-senses, eyes blind as stone!
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
73
I pity you, flinging at me the very insults each man here will fling at you so soon
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
74
Blind, lost in the night, endless night that nursed you! You can't hurt me or anyone else who sees the light-- you can never touch me
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
75
here were you? Did you rise to the crisis? Not a word, you and your birds, your gods--nothing. No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant, I stopped the Sphinx! With no help from the birds, the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark.
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
76
You mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption of your life, to the house you live in, those you live with-- who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
77
Absurd, am I! To you, not to your parents: the ones who bore you found me sane enough
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
78
Parents--who? Wait...who is my father?
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
79
This day will bring your birth and your destruction
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
80
Riddles--all you can say are riddles, murk and darkness
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
81
Ah, but aren't you the best man alive at solving riddles?
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
82
Mock me for that, go on, and you'll reveal my greatness
Oedipus to Tiresias (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
83
Your great good fortune, true, it was your ruin
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
84
I will go, once I have said what I came here to say. I will never shrink from the anger in your eyes-- you can't destroy me. Listen to me closely: the man you've sought so long, proclaiming, cursing up and down, the murderer of Laius-- he is here. A stranger, you may think, who lives among you, he soon will be revealed a native Theban but he will take no joy in the revelation. Blind who now has eyes, beggar who now is rich, he will gripe his way toward a foreign soil, a stick tapping before him step by step.
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
85
Revealed at last, brother and father both to the children he embraces, to his mother son and husband both-- he sowed the loins his father sowed, he spilled his father's blood! Go in and reflect on that, solve that. And if you find I've lied from this day onward call the prophet blind.
Tiresias to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
86
I think you're insane
Creon to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
87
What if you're wholly wrong?
Creon to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
88
No matter--I must rule
Oedipus to Creon (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
89
Ai-- now I can see it all, clear as day. Who told you all this at the time, Jocasta
Oedipus to Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
90
I am afraid, Jocasta, I have said too much already. That man-- I've got to see him
Oedipus to Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
91
My father was Poly's, king of Corinth. My mother, a Dorian, Merope. And I was held the prince of the realm among the people there, till something struck me out of nowhere, something strange...worth remarking perhaps, hardly worth the anxiety I gave it. Some man at a banquet who had drunk too much shouted out--he was far gone, mind you-- that I am not my father's son. Fighting words! I barely restrained myself that day but early the next I went to mother and father, questioned them closely, and they were enraged at the accusation and the fool who let it fly. So as for my parents I was satisfied, but still this thing kept gnawing at me, the slander spread--I had to make my move. And so, unknown to mother and father I set out for Delphi
Oedipus to Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
92
You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see-- you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!
Apollo's Oracle (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
93
Now Jocasta, I will tell you all. Making my way toward this triple crossroad I began to see a herald, then a brace of colts drawing a wagon, and mounted on the bench...a man, just as you've described him, coming face-to-face, and the one in the lead and the old man himself were about the thrust me off the road--brute force-- and the one shouldering me aside, the driver, I strike him in anger! -- and the old man, watching me coming up his wheels-- he brings down his prod, two prongs straight at my head! I paid him back with interest! Short work, by god -- with one blow of the staff in his right hand I know him out of his high seat, roll him out of the wagon, sprawling headlong-- I killed them all-- every mother's son!
Orestes to Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
94
Great laws tower above us, reared on high born for the brilliant vault of heaven
Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
95
Pride breeds the tyrant violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting with all that is overripe and rich with ruin-- clawing up to the heights, headlong pride crashes down the abyss-sheer doom!
Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
96
No footing helps, all foothold lost and gone. But the healthy strife that makes the city strong-- I pray that god will never end that wrestling: god, my champion, I will never let you go
Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
97
If any man comes striding, high and mighty in all he says and does, no fear of justice, no reverence for the temples of the gods-- let a rough doom tear him down, repay his pride, breakneck, ruinous pride! If he cannot reap his profits fairly cannot restrain himself from outrage-- mad, laying hands on the holy things untouchable!
Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
98
Can such a man, so desperate, still boast he can save his life from the flashing bolts of god? If all such violence goes with honor now why join the sacred dance?
Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
99
You prophecies of the gods, where are you now? This is the man that Oedipus feared for years, he fled him, not to kill him-- and now he's dead quite by chance, a normal, natural death, not murdered by his son.
Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
100
Jocasta, why, why look to the Prophet's hearth, the fires of the future? Why scan the birds that scream above our heads? They winged me on to the murder of my father, did they? That was my doom? Well look, he's dead and buried, hidden under the earth, and here I am in Thebes, I never put hand to sword-- unless some longing for me wasted him away, then in a sense you'd say I caused his death. But now, all those prophecies I feared -- Polybus packs them off to sleep with him in hell! They're nothing, worthless.
Oedipus to Jocasta (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
101
What should a man fear? It's all chance, chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can.
Live, Oedipus, as if there's no tomorrow!
Jocasta to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
102
Polybus was nothing to you, that's why, not in blood
What are you saying -- Polybus was not my father?
No more than I am. He and I are equals.
Messenger to Oedipus
Oedipus
Messenger
(In Sophocle's Oedipus)
103
O the generations of men the dying generations -- adding the total of all your lives I find they come to nothing... does there exist, is there a man on earth who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision? And the vision no sooner dawns than dies blazing into oblivion. You are my great example, you, your life your destiny, Oedipus, man of misery-- I count no man blest.
Chorus to Oedipus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
104
Apollo, friends, Apollo-- he ordained my agonies-- these, my pains on pains! But the hand that struck my eyes was mine, mine alone--no one else-- I did it all myself! What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see could bring me joy.
Oedipus to Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
105
I'd never have come to this, my father's murderer-- never been branded mother's husband, all men see me now! Now, loathed by the gods, son of the mother I defined coupling in my father's bed, spawning lives in loins that spawned my wretched life. What grief can crown this grief? It's mine along, my destiny-- I am Oedipus.
(true self knowledge)
Oedipus to Chorus (In Sophocle's Oedipus)
