Quotes from The Bacchae

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Do not mistake the rule of force
for true power. Men are not shaped by force.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Young man,
two are the forces most precious to mankind.
The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her --
and she sustains humanity with solid food.
Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
bringing the counterpart to bread: wine
and the blessings of life's flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out
to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“He is life's liberating force.
He is release of limbs and communion through dance.
He is laughter, and music in flutes.
He is repose from all cares -- he is sleep!
When his blood bursts from the grape
and flows across tables laid in his honor
to fuse with our blood,
he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows
of ivy-cool sleep.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“He who believes needs no explanation.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“What we understand is that society must allow room for the irrational, in healthy balance with the rational.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Prepare yourselves
for the roaring voice of the God of Joy!”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Remember this! No amount of Bacchic reveling
can corrupt an honest woman.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“[Diontsos].
Swoony type,
long hair, bedroom eyes,
cheeks like wine.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“My hair is holy. I grow it long for the God.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Come, God --
Bromius, Bacchus, Dionysus --
burst into life, burst
into being, be a mighty bull,
a hundred-headed snake,
a fire-breathing lion.
Burst into smiling life, oh Bacchus!”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“The God knows when to smile.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“O Dionysus, we feel you near,
stirring like molten lava
under the ravaged earth,
flowing from the wounds of your trees
in tears of sap,
screaming with the rage
of your hunted beasts.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Those who look for filth, can find it at the height of noon.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“O Dionysus, Son of God,
do you see our sufferings?
Do you see your faithful
in helpless agony before the oppressor?
O Lord, come down from Olympus,
shake your golden thyrsus
and stifle the murderer's insolent fury.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“This town must learn,
even against its will, how much it costs
to scorn a God's mysteries and to be purged.
So shall I vindicate my virgin mother
and reveal myself to mortals as a God,
the son of God.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Isn’t it delightful to forget how old we are?”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Sense is nonsense to a fool.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“What else is Wisdom? What of man's endeavour
Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;
And shall not Loveliness be loved for ever?”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Receive the god into your kingdom
pour libations, cover your head with ivy, join the dance!”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“You don't know what your life is, nor what you're doing, nor who you are.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Dreams of the proud man, making great And greater ever, Things which are not of God. In wide And devious coverts, hunter-wise, He coucheth Time's unhasting stride, Following, following, him whose eyes Look not to Heaven. For all is vain, The pulse of the heart, the plot of the brain, That striveth beyond the laws that live. And is thy Faith so much to give, Is it so hard a thing to see, That the Spirit of God, whate'er it be, The Law that abides and changes not, ages long, The Eternal and Nature-born—these things be strong?”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“For strangely graven
Is the orb of life, that one and another
In gold and power may outpass his brother.
And men in their millions float and flow
And seethe with a million hopes as leaven;
And they win their Will, or they miss their Will,
And the hopes are dead or are pined for still;
But whoe'er can know,
As the long days go,
That To Live is happy, hath found his Heaven!”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“Some years later, Zeus and Hera were arguing about who got more pleasure from sex: men or women. To settle the argument, they called for Tiresias, who had lived as both. Tiresias took the side of Zeus, saying that women’s pleasure was greater, and Hera, in her fury, turned him blind.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“BAKKHAI : Holiness
is a word I love to hear,
it sounds like wings to me,
wings brushing the world, grazing my life.”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“He is the god of epiphanies—sudden spiritual manifestations—and of transformation, and there is more shape-shifting associated with Dionysus than with any other Greek god except for his father, Zeus, whose metamorphoses were usually prompted by his pursuit of women. The”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

“They did attack our herds: you could have seen a woman pull a calf to pieces as it bellowed alive in her bare hands!”
― Euripides, quote from The Bacchae

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