"Oedipus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I am a woman, Monsieur; my instinct never deceives me—there is something within me which assures me that you would find happiness in marriage. Women are so devoted, so loving (not all, of course, but some)! And, then, they are so sensitive to glory. Remember that at your age one has need, like Oedipus, of an Egeria! Your cook is no longer able—she is deaf, she is infirm. If anything should happen to you at night! Oh! it makes me shudder even ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... unsocialized desires, arising out of a metaphysical, undifferentiated yearning called libido. In the Freudian "psychology" the libido is mainly sex desire and takes the form of homosexual feelings, incest feelings (desire for the father or for the mother—the oedipus complex), desire for the sister or brother.[1] (The human being, according to Freud, goes through three stages in his sex life: first, a sex attachment to himself marked by thumb sucking, masturbation, etc., second, an attachment to the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and tortures arising from eating cabbage and such things may, no doubt, have tragic consequences enough, but somehow the men whom these things put on the rack refuse to come to life in the imagination on the same tragic plane where Prometheus lies on his crag and Oedipus strikes out his eyes that they may no longer look upon his shame. Strindberg is too anxious to make tragedy out of discomforts instead of out of sorrows. When he is denouncing woman as a creature ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... name of Polynices, one of OEdipus's sons, means in the original "much quarrelling." In the altercations between the two brothers, in AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, this conceit is employed; and it is remarkable, that so poor a conundrum could not be rejected by any of these three ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... nature? One looks at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... positively distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before OEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... Egyptian war!—I should not the less say he had made a wrongful treaty. But 'a fac is a fac': someone hitherto makes this settlement impossible. If now the Tories miscarry, apparently Gladstone will come in again, and not Oedipus can tell us ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Shakespeare, will have none of the Greeks, either. Let him tell us why: "The Greeks ventured to produce scenes no less revolting to us. Hippolyte, crushed by his fall, counts his wounds and utters doleful cries. Philoctetes falls in his paroxysms of pain; black blood flows from his wound. Oedipus, covered with the blood that still drops from the sockets of the eyes he has torn out, complains bitterly of gods and men. We hear the shrieks of Clytemnestra, murdered by her own son, and Electra, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... lusts. 'What is it?' The declaration that such things are hateful to the Gods, and most abominable and unholy. The reason is that everywhere, in jest and earnest alike, this is the doctrine which is repeated to all from their earliest youth. They see on the stage that an Oedipus or a Thyestes or a Macareus, when undeceived, are ready to kill themselves. There is an undoubted power in public opinion when no breath is heard adverse to the law; and the legislator who would enslave these enslaving ...
— Laws • Plato
... dart, which Diana had once given her. The dog is turned into stone, while hunting a wild beast, which Themis has sent to ravage the territories of Thebes, after the interpretation of the riddle of the Sphinx, by Oedipus. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... a Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in reserve for their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade ourselves, as some have done, that we possess the best work of men untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... its contents attests its importance for the present and the future. Wagner's "Parsifal," in an important sense, can be termed our national drama. Such a work like AEschylus' "Persian" and Sophocles' Oedipus-trilogy, should recall to the consciousness of a world-historical people the period in which it stands in the world's history, and thereby make clear the mission it ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... of gladiators, which is to take place in Beneventum. See to what cobblers rise in our time, in spite of the saying, 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam!' Vitelius is the descendant of a cobbler; but Vatinius is the son of one! Perhaps he drew thread himself! The actor Aliturus represented Oedipus yesterday wonderfully. I asked him, by the way, as a Jew, if Christians and Jews were the same. He answered that the Jews have an eternal religion, but that Christians are a new sect risen recently in Judea; that in the time of Tiberius the Jews crucified a certain ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Eumenides, but in deathless tenacity, the rich aroma of Sophocles' narcissus, and the soft crocus light linger there still; while from thickets of olive, nightingales break their hearts in song, as thrilling as the melody that smote the ears of doomed and dying Oedipus. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a strong, positive identification with his mother rather than his father. It is part of the unresolved Oedipus complex. He sees his mother as a kind, loving individual, always ready to help. Even if the mother did something socially unacceptable, the individual would defend her vehemently. The father who might do something wrong would rarely be excused. Just the opposite is true with the female ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... was under their stories, but how much of it no man can tell: how Amulius of Alba Longa slew his sons, and slew also his daughter, loved of Mars, mother of twin sons left to die in the forest, like Oedipus, father-slayers, as Oedipus was, wolf-suckled, of whom one was born to kill the other and be the first King, and be taken up to Jupiter in storm and lightning at the last. The legend of wise Numa, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... any means mean to be so sphinx-like in my letter, though you have turned out an Oedipus of the first water. True it is that I mean to "range myself," "live cleanly and leave off sack," within the next few months—that is to say, if nothing happens to the good ship which is at present bearing my ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... one hundred and thirteen plays, but only seven of them are extant. Of these the most familiar is the tragedy of OEd'ipus Tyran'nus—"King OEdipus." It is not only considered his masterpiece, but also, as regards the choice and disposition of the fable on which it is founded, the finest tragedy of antiquity. A new interest has been given to it in this country by its recent representation in the original ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Irish romance is in itself no proof of the Druidic origin of that form of the romance, nor even of the existence of that element in the romance's earliest form: upon such a principle the archaic character of the motif of the "Oedipus Coloneus" would prove it to be the oldest of the Greek tragedies, while as a matter of fact it seems to be doubtful whether the introduction of this motif into the story of Oedipus was not due to Sophocles himself, although of course he drew the idea of it, if not from the original ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... usual companions. Methought the charm would be broken if I were seen, but I heard the music of her voice and was happy. I gave to each heroine of whom I read, her beauty and matchless excellences—such was Antigone, when she guided the blind Oedipus to the grove of the Eumenides, and discharged the funeral rites of Polynices; such was Miranda in the unvisited cave of Prospero; such Haidee, on the sands of the Ionian island. I was mad with excess of passionate devotion; but pride, tameless as fire, invested my nature, and prevented me ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... no OEdipus—although a man of delicate perceptions and brilliant intellect—and he turned imploringly to a wise counsellor for aid against the tormentor who chose to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... promptly slew if the correct answer were not forthcoming. This scourge at length drove the poor Thebans to despair, and they offered their kingdom and the hand of their Queen to whomsoever would relieve them of the dreaded monster's presence. One Oedipus essayed this task. The sphinx asked him, "What being has four feet, two feet, and three feet; only one voice; but whose feet vary, and when it has most, is weakest" Oedipus answered, "Man," and there and then the sphinx threw itself into the sea. Man, you will notice, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of error, is shown to be the consequence and the punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mistakes of the wholly innocent would jar on our sense of right, and could never produce a legitimate work of art. Even Oedipus suffers, not merely because he is under the curse of a higher power, but because he is wilful, and rushes upon his own fate. Timon suffers, not because he was generous and good, but from the defects of his qualities. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... as those of OEdipus and Adrastus, exemplifying the struggles of individual humanity against the overpowering force of circumstances and necessity, which gave to the early Greeks those same lessons which we of modern days draw, in somewhat less artistic fashion, from the study of statistics ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde |
