Antigone Quotes

Don't let anyone tell you that the truth can't disappear. If I believe in anything, rather than God, is that I am part of something that goes all the way back to Antigone, and that whatever speaks the truth of our hearts can only make us stronger. Can only give us the power to counter the hate and bigotry and heal this addled world. Just remember: You are not alone.

I am not a playwright. A playwright would take "Antigone" and hit it a few clouts and knock it out of shape and restructure it. My versioning was strictly verbal.

The Greeks had considered hope the final evil in Pandora's box. They also gave us an image of perfect nobility: a human being lovingly doing her duty to another human being despite all threats, and going to her death with pride and courage, not deterred by any hope - Antigone.

What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough.

The problem with Antigone is that she stood up to the despot Creon, but in such a way that she ended up dying. So she bought her defiance with her death. The real question I ended up asking was, "What would it mean for Antigone to have stood up to Creon and lived?" And the only way she could have lived is if she had had a serious social movement with her. If she arrived with a social movement to take down the despot, maybe it would have taken 18 days only, like in Egypt. It's really important to be able to re-situate one's rage and destitution in the context of a social movement.

Miss Havisham is an important feminine literary figure in the tradition of Antigone (though it's significant that Antigone is fighting to bury something and Miss Havisham refuses, as it were, to bury the corpse). Like Hamlet, she's focused on what everyone would rather not know or would like to forget, and she seems crazy / stuck as well as bitter, but she's also a perfect prototype of a performance artist. She's intentionally hard to deal with inviting the audience to remain with the violated body, the evidence of violence.

It's terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.

Reason is God's crowning gift to man.

Do not believe that you alone can be right.The man who thinks that,The man who maintains that only he has the powerTo reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul-A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

A man though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.

Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He's fit for public authority.

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none More wonderful than man.

Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still.

The ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; but since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

Love, unconquerable, Waster of rich men, keeper Of warm lights and all-night vigil In the soft face of a girl: Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor! Even the pure immortals cannot escape you, And mortal man, in his one day's dusk, Trembles before your glory.