IB PAPER 2 - Important Antigone Quotes

Antigone

"I dared. It was not God's proclamation. That final Justice that rules the world below makes no such laws"

Antigone

"Think me a fool, if you like; but it may well be that a fool convicts me of folly"

Creon

"I have killed my son and wife"

Antigone

"It is my nature to join in love, not hate"

Antigone

"The blasphemy of my birth had followed me"

Antigone

"Lead me to my vigil, where I must have neither love nor lamentation; no song, but silence"

Ismene

"I beg the dead to forgive me, but I am helpless: I must yield to those in authority"

Creon

"I have nothing but contempt for the kind of Governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the state"

Creon

"Money talks, and the wisest have sometimes been known to count a few coins too many"

Antigone

"Creon is not strong enough to stand in my way"

Creon

"The inflexible heart breaks first, the toughest iron cracks first, and the wildest horses bend their necks at the pull of the smallest curb"

Creon

"The State is the King"

Antigone

"Living as I live, with evil all around me, think Death less of a friend?"

Creon

"The piety show to the dead is piety in vain"

Creon

"I have been a kind of butt for the dull arrows of doddering fortune-tellers!"

Creon

"I would not yield. I am not afraid of pollution: No man can defile the gods."

Ismene

"We are only women, we cannot fight with men, Antigone!"

Antigone

"Ismene, I am going to bury him. Will you come?"

Creon

"What things I suffer, and at men's hands. Because I would not transgress the laws of heaven"

Creon

"The laws of the gods are mighty, and a man must serve them to the last day of his life!"

Creon

"There is nothing in the world so demoralizing as money"

Creon

"Crookedness of all kinds; and all for money!"

Creon

"Go into money, make money, speculate in India gold or that synthetic gold from Sardis, get rich otherwise than by my consent to bury him"

Haimon

"Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct"

Creon

"And the man who dared do this?"

Creon

"Like father, like daughter: big headstrong, deaf to reason! She has never learned to yield"

Creon

"The pains that men will take to come to pain!"

Creon

"I want no wicked women for my sons!"

Sentry

"You must not punish me for what someone else has done"

Sentry

"How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!"

Chorus

"No pride on earth is free of the curse of heaven"

Sentry

"It is a good thing to escape from death, but it is no great pleasure to bring death to a friend."

Sentry

"There is nothing so comfortable as your own safe skin"

Sentry

"Are you sure it is my voice, and not your conscience?"

Choragos

"King, can it be that the gods have done this?"

Choragos

"Then do not pray any more: the sky is deaf."

Antigone

"I am not afraid of the danger, if it means death, it will not be the worst of deaths - death without honor"

Antigone

"You are alive, but I belong to Death"

Choragos

"Big words are always punished, and proud men in old age learn to be wise"

Messenger

"I shall not try to comfort you: what is the use, since comfort could lie only in what is true? The truth is always best"

Creon

"Sold your soul for some silver: that's all you've done."

Ismene

"Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver, King"

Choragos

"The briefest way is the best in a world of sorrow"

Chorus

"Fortunate is the man who has never tasted God's vengeance!"

Chorus

"Fate works most for woe with folly's fainted show"

Chorus

"Reverence is a virtue, but strength lives in established law that must prevail"

Haimon

"You are not in position to know everything that people say or do, or what they feel: your temper terrifies them—everyone will tell you only what you like to hear"

Haimon

"In a flood time you can see how some trees end, while stubborn trees are torn up, roots and all. And the same thing happens in sailing: make your sheet fast, never slacken, —and over you go"

Haimon

"There is no threat in speaking to emptiness"

Tiresias

"Our hearts and altars are stained with the corruption of dogs and carrion birds"

Tiresias

"And repair the evil. The only crime is pride"

Antigone

"There Is no guilt in reverence for the dead"

Tiresias

"Do you want to buy me now, Creon?"

Creon

"The pains that men will take to come to pain!"

Tiresias

"Maybe he will learn at last to control a wiser tongue in a better head"