30 Quotes About Oedipus

tis greater far To rule a people than a wilderness.

...What was wrong between Diana and me was that she was too much a mother to me, and as I had had one mother, and lost her, I was not in a hurry to acquire another--not even a young and beautiful one with whom I could play Oedipus to both our hearts' content. If I could manage it, I had no intention of being anybody's own dear laddie, ever again.

Like it or not, after Freud, no one had to read Sophocles to know something about Oedipus.

OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

MARSYAS:        Beware! Easily trips the big word "dare."Each man's an Œdipus, that thinksHe hath the four powers of the Sphinx,Will, Courage, Knowledge, Silence. Son,Even the adepts scarce win to one!The Thoughts—they fall like rotten fruits.But to destroy the power that makesThese thoughts—thy Self? A man it takesTo tear his soul up by the roots!This is the mandrake fable, boy!

Aber wenn das menschliche Schuldgefühl auf die Tötung des Urvaters zurückgeht, das war doch ein Fall von 'Reue', und damals soll der Voraussetzung nach Gewissen und Schuldgefühl vor der Tat nicht bestanden haben? Woher kam in diesem Fall die Reue?

By God, I'll have more booty in a moment.

Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion. Wrote Schiller.

I got Oedipus off the incest charge--technicality, of course--he didn't know it was his mother at the time.