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But greatness that doth o'erreach itself, brings no blessing to mortal men; but pays a penalty of greater ruin whenever fortune is wroth with a family.

— Euripides Medea (-431)

τὰ δ᾿ ὑπερβάλλοντ᾿
οὐδένα καιρὸν δύναται θνητοῖς,
μείζους δ᾿ ἄτας, ὅταν ὀργισθῇ
δαίμων οἴκοις, ἀπέδωκεν.

Original text (Ancient Greek)

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Luck

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)

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In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

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.