Skip to content

Yet all men are constrained
To love their fatherland; who saith not so,
Sporteth with words, his heart is otherwhere.

— Euripides Phoenissae (-409)

ἀλλ᾿ ἀναγκαίως ἔχει
πατρίδος ἐρᾶν ἅπαντας· ὃς δ᾿ ἄλλως λέγει
λόγοισι χαίρει, τὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐκεῖσ᾿ ἔχει.

Original text (Ancient Greek)

Another quote →

Topics

Love

More quotes by Euripides

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.

Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven — of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

Bacchae (-405)

When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

No! a Spartan maid could not be chaste, e'en if she would, who leaves her home and bares her limbs and lets her robe float free, to share with youths their races and their sports.

Andromache (-425)

One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good.

Hippolytus (-428)

All Euripides quotes →

You may also like

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

Alexander Pope

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Euripides (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.