Sophokles
Elektra : I ask this one thing: / let me go mad in my own way. — Sophokles, Electra (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) Trans. Anne Carson (Oxford University Press, April 19, 2001)
Category: Tragedy
William Shakespeare
Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. — William Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act I, Scene vi (1606)
Jean Racine
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy. — Jean Racine
William Shakespeare
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death! — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene iii
William Shakespeare
There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,And nothing is at a like goodness still,For goodness, growing to a plurisy,Dies in his own too much. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii
Aeschylus
And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. — Aeschylus, from the chorus in Agamemnon; The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides, transl. Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics, 1984)
William Shakespeare
For death remembered should be like a mirror,Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.” ― William Shakespeare, Pericles. Act I, Scene i
William Shakespeare
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere wellIt were done quickly —William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act IV Scene vii
William Shakespeare
What a piece of work is a man! How noble inreason, how infinite in faculty! In form and movinghow express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of theworld! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what isthis quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no,nor… Continue reading William Shakespeare
Aeschylus
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 despite, against our will, Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. ― Aeschylus, The Orestei. 458 BCE
The Vale of Soul-Making 