Sigmund Freud Quotes

That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, an all to make a song for those to come.

Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.

Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

Death is softer by far than tyranny.

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity

Most of the women in Greek tragedies have their fates predetermined. The gods dictate that such and such will happen to them, and everything they predict comes true. Not Medea.

The point is always reached after which the gods no longer share their lives with mortal men and women, they die or wither away or retire... Now that they've gone, the high drama's over. What remains is ordinary human life.

Fate with impartial hand turns out the doom of high and low; her capacious urn is constantly shaking the names of all mankind.

Zeus it seems has given us from youth to old age a nice ball of wool to wind-nothing but wars upon wars until we shall perish every one.

How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! ...I do not deserve my lot! ...O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!

He whom the Gods love dies young.

I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also.

An old art spreading rumours about / Paradise, it begs outside the gates / Of the gods: the active gods come out.

The lot of man-to suffer and die.

Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.

Believe me, the gods spare the afflicted, and do not always oppress those who are unfortunate.

Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.

It is the greatest and the tallest of trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves.

This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.

The lot of man - to suffer and to die.

The gods, the immortals, were the inventors of death and corruption; yet with one or two notable exceptions they have lacked the courage to try their invention out on themselves.