The Oedipus Cycle Quotes

“No one with any sense of self-control.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“who in his right mind would rather rule
and live in anxiety than sleep in peace?”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“But now I have a right to learn from you
as you just learned from me.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“I don’t know. And when I don’t, I keep quiet.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Look, if you think crude, mindless stubbornness
such a gift, you’ve lost your sense of balance”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Are you quite finished? It’s your turn to listen
for just as long as you’ve ... instructed me.
Hear me out, then judge me on the facts.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Your great good fortune, true, it was your ruin.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“This day will bring your birth and your destruction.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“If I thought you would blurt out such absurdities,
you’d have died waiting before I’d had you summoned.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“I would never have come if you hadn’t called me here.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“No man will ever be rooted from the earth as brutally as you.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“And a crowd of other horrors you’d never dream
will level you with yourself and all your children.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Soon, soon
you’ll scream aloud—what haven won’t reverberate?”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“All unknowing
you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,
the dead below the earth and the living here above,
and the double lash of your mother and your father’s curse
will whip you from this land one day, their footfall
treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding
your eyes that now can see the light!”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“You with your precious eyes,
you’re blind to the corruption of your life,”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“I am not your slave. I serve Apollo.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“You are the king no doubt, but in one respect,
at least, I am your equal: the right to reply.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“you’ll pay in tears, I promise you, for this,
this witch-hunt.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant,”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Creon is not your downfall, no, you are your own.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“True, it is not your fate
to fall at my hands. Apollo is quite enough,”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“I pity you, flinging at me the very insults
each man here will fling at you so soon.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“Indeed, if the truth has any power.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“I say you are the murderer you hunt.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“The truth with all its power lives inside me.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“You are the curse, the corruption of the land!”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“What will come will come.
Even if I shroud it all in silence.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“You criticize my temper ... unaware
of the one you live with, you revile me.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“None of you knows—
and I will never reveal my dreadful secrets,
not to say your own.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

“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.”
― Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus