Antigone and Creon: Key Quotes and Themes in Sophocles' Play

"Once an enemy, never a friend, not even after death."

Creon to Antigone

"Why not? Our own brother's burial! Hasn't Creon graced one with all the rites, disgraced the other?"

Antigone to Ismene

"Courage! Live your life. I gave myself to death, long ago, so I might serve the dead."

Antigone to Ismene

"Let him do—dream up something desperate, past all human limit!"

Creon to Chorus Leader

"Abandon her there, alone, and let her choose—death or a buried life with a good roof for shelter."

Creon to his guards

"Stubbornness brands you for stupidity pride is a crime."

Tiresias to Creon

"Well, that won out, and the lot fell to me, condemned me, unlucky as ever, I got the prize."

Sentry to Creon

"Better to fall from power, if fall we must, at the hands of a man—never be rated inferior to a woman, never."

Creon to Haemon

"Sooner or later foul is fair, fair is foul to the man the gods will ruin."

Chorus to Creon

"I am not the man, not now: she is the man if this victory goes to her and she goes free."

Creon to chorus

"I will bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will lie with the one I love and loved by him—an outrage sacred to the gods!"

Antigone to Ismene

"Dear god, shout it from the rooftops. I'll hate you all the more for silence—tell the world!"

Antigone to Ismene

"Like father, like daughter, passionate, wild . . . she hasn't learned to bend before adversity."

Chorus Leader to Creon

"The girl was an old hand at insolence when she overrode the edicts we made public. But once she had done it—the insolence, twice over—to glory in it laughing, mocking us to our face with what she'd done."

Creon to Chorus

"I was born to join in love, not hate—that is my nature."

Antigone to Creon

"All men make mistakes, it is only human."

Tiresias to Creon

"Am I to rule this land for others-or for myself?"

Creon to Haemon

"You're in love with impossibility."

Ismene to Antigone

"You really expect to fling abuse at me and not receive the same?"

Haemon to Creon

"I go to wed the lord of the dark waters."

Antigone to herself

"No more prayers now. For mortal men there is no escape from the doom we must endure."

Chorus Leader to Creon