The Burial at Thebes Quotes

“Be the necklace-fire of stars,
The cauterizing lightning.
Bewilder us with good.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“All of us would like to have been born
Infallible, but since we knew we weren't,
It's better to attend to those who speak
In honesty and good faith, and learn from them.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Nobody,
Nobody can be sure they're always right.
The ones who are fullest of themselves that way
Are the emptiest vessels.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“You can't just pluck your honour off a bush
You didn't plant.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“No windfall or good fortune comes to mortals
That isn't paid for in the coin of pain.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“The land of the living, sister,
Is neither here nor there.
We enter it and we leave it.
The dead in the land of the dead
Are the ones you'll be with longest.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Wise conduct is the key to happiness.
Always rule by gods and reverence them.
Those who overbear will be brought to grief.
Fate will flail them on its winnowing floor
And in due season teach them to be wise.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Chorus:

Consider well, my son. All men make mistakes.
But mistakes don't have to be forever,
They can be admitted and atoned for.
It's the overbearing man who is to blame.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“I am not the target. I am the archer.
My shafts are tipped with truth and they stick deep.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Money has a long and sinister reach.
It slips into the system, changes hands
And starts to eat away at the foundations
Of everything we stand for.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Chorus:

Steadfast Antigone,
Never before did Death
Open his stone door
To one so radiant.
You would not live a lie.
Vindicated, lauded,
Age and disease outwitted,
YOu go with head held high.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Nobody,
Nobody can be sure they're always right.
The ones who are fullest of themselves that way
Are the emptiest vessels.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Well has it been said: the man obsessed
Is a cock of the walk in a hurry towards the worst.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Whoever has been spared the worst is lucky.
When high gods shake a house
That family is going to feel the blow
Generation after generation.
It starts like an undulation underwater,
A surge that hauls black sand up off the bottom,
Then turns itself into a tidal current
Lashing the shingle and shaking promontories.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“You can't, friend, have your palm greased and
expect
To get away clean. Everything comes out.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Until a man has passed this test of office
And proved himself in the exercise of power,
He can't be truly known--for what he is, I mean,
In his heart and mind and capabilities.
Worst is the man who has all the good advise
And then because his nerve fails, fails to act
In accordance with it, as a leader should.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Bear with the present; what will be will be.
The future is cloth waiting to be cut.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Whoever has been spared the worst is lucky.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Obedience
And respect must be instilled. And that is why
No woman here is going to be allowed
To walk all over us. Otherwise, as men
We'll be disgraced. We won't deserve the name.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

“Worst is the man who has all the good advice
And then because his nerve fails, fails to act
In accordance with it, as a leader should.
And equally to blame
Is anyone who puts the personal
Above the overall thing, puts friend
Or family first.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone