Æschylus (525 BC - 456 BC) Greek Playwright

Attributed

• Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.

• Call no man happy till he is dead.
  • Variant: Only when man's life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.
  • Variant: Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.

• Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
  • Variant: Death is softer by far than tyranny.

• Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.
  • Variant: The man whose authority is recent is always stern.

• God is not averse to deceit in a holy cause.

• God loves to help him who strives to help himself.
  • Variant: To the man who himself strives earnestly, God also lends a helping hand.
  • Variant: When one is willing and eager, the Gods join in.
  • Variant: When a man's willing and eager the gods join in.

• Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.

• He who goes unenvied shall not be admired.

• He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

• His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.
  • Variant: To be rather than to seem.

• I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

• I think the slain care little if they sleep or rise again.

• I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.

• In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
  • Variant: For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.

• In war, truth is the first casualty.

• It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

• It is always in season for old men to learn.

• It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
  • Variant: It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

• It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

• It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

• It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man.

• Necessity is stronger far than art.

• Report uttered by the people is everywhere of great power. Agamemnon (938)

• So, in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft, "With our own feathers, not by others' hand Are we now smitten."

• The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

• The reward of suffering is experience.
  • Variant: Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

• The wisest of the wise may err.

• There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls.

• There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.

• Time brings all things to pass.
  • Variant: Time as he grows old teaches all things.

• To be fortunate is God, and more than God to mortals.

• To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift.

• When a match has equal partners then I fear not.

• Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?

• Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.