Euripides Quotes

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history; that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous. (Stacy Schiff)

Euripides seems to have felt that the dignified perfection of Sophocles could be challenged only by novelty and irresponsibility. The religious conditions of the Dionysian festival kept him within certain bounds... But within the imposed limits Euripides was as profane as he dared to be, making melodrama of the divine realities which his predecessors accepted religiously, using the stage merely as a convenience for popularizing his own eccentric values.

Laura Riding

Euripides says,- Who knows but that this life is really death, And whether death is not what men call life?

Diogenes Laërtius

I reckon I probably worked for Euripides a long time ago. I do think we have many Earth walks and it's possible that he's an old friend. Does that sound too stupid for words? Quite frankly I think I've been an actor in so many lifetimes.

Joyce DeWitt

I realized, after studying much previous research on the question [of Jesus], that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides' Bacchae, and Josephus. ...A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case. And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. [...] There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth. At least that's the current state of the evidence as I see it.

Robert M. Price

Euripides was wont to say, "Silence is an answer to a wise man."

Plutarch

Gay actors have been playing straight since Euripides.

Bryan Batt

Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand: Conduct me, Jove, and you, O Destiny, Wherever your decrees have fixed my station. ~ Cleanthes. I follow cheerfully; and, did I not, Wicked and wretched, I must follow still Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven. ~ Euripides, Frag. 965.

Epictetus

Our Euripides, the human, With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of things common Till they rose to touch the spheres.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed.

Moses Mendelssohn

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were. (Aristotle)

This context enables us to understand the passionate affection in which the poets of the New Comedy held Euripides; so that we are no longer startled by the desire of Philemon, who wished to be hanged at once so that he might meet Euripides in the underworld, so long as he could be sure that the deceased was still in full possession of his senses.

Friedrich Nietzsche