Quotes from Alcestis

Quotations follow the David Kovacs translation (Harvard University Press, 1994) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   There be many shapes of mystery; and many things God brings to be, past hope or fear. And the end men looked for cometh not, and a path is there where no man thought, so hath it fallen here.

2. 3

   Eat, drink, make thyself merry. Count the bliss of the one passing hour thine own; the rest is Fortune's.

3. 4

   Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die.

4. 5

   Death is a debt all mortal men must pay; / Aye, there is no man living who can say / If life will last him yet a single day.

5. 6

   I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses; I have been versed in the reasonings of men; but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.

6. 7

   I might have lived and wedded any in Thessaly I chose, and dwelt with happiness in a royal home.

7. 8

   No one is so foolish as to prefer death to life.

8. 9

   We all of us are debtors unto death.

9. 10

   You shine in memory. And mortal men, remembering you, will praise your death: a song that does not die.

10. 11

    Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.

11. 12

    A second wife is hateful to the children of the first, a viper is not more hateful.