Quotes from Aeschylus

Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.

It is through suffering that learning comes.

Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence.

For children preserve the fame of a man after his death.

Time as he grows old teaches all things.

Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.

Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.

Words are doctors for the diseased temper.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Only through suffering do we learn

ATHENA: You wish to be called righteous rather than act right. [...] I say, wrong must not win by technicalities.

When one is wise, it's wisest to seem foolish.

Your speech is pompous sounding, full of pride, as fits the lackey of the Gods. You are young and young your rule and you think the tower in which you live is free from sorrow: from it have I not seen two tyrants thrown? The third, who now is king, I shall yet live to see him fall, of all three most suddenly, most dishonored. Do you think I will crouch before your Gods, -so new-and tremble? I am far from that.

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.

In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain

I take my cue from deeds, not words.

They came back To widows, To fatherless children, To screams, to sobbing. The men came back As little clay jars Full of sharp cinders.

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

For many men value appearances more than reality—thus they violate what's right. Everyone's prepared to sigh over some suffering man, though no sorrow really eats their hearts, or they can pretend to join another person's happiness forcing their faces into smiling masks. But a good man discerns true character— he's not fooled by eyes feigning loyalty, favouring him with watered-down respect.

He who learns must suffer.

And there they ring the walls, the young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.

I know the stars by heart, the armies of the night, and there in the lead the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer, bring us all we have-- our great blazing kings of the sky, I know them, when they rise and when the fall . . .

Pour everything out for the blood you have shed, you're wasting your time in appeasing the dead.

Death is softer by far than tyranny.