Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Libation Bearers.
Revenge Quotes
(Orestes): "O Zeus! Grant me vengeance for my father's death! Be my ally if you will!" (18-19)
Justice and Judgment Quotes
(Chorus): "To have good success – this is god among men, and more, even, than god Justice weighs down with its dark, quickly upon some in the light; for some mid-way to the dark, delay grows...
Family Quotes
(Orestes): "Has some new disaster befallen this house, or would I be right in guessing that these women bring libations for my father, appeasements of the dead? It could never be anything else! Why...
Language and Communication Quotes
(Orestes): "Hermes of the Underworld, watching over paternal powers! I ask you, be my saviour and my ally; for my coming to this land is my return from exile." (Fragment 1; 1-3)
Memory and the Past Quotes
(Orestes): "If only there under Troy some Lycian with his spear, father, had cut you down and stripped you! You would have bequeathed fame in your house, founded a life for your children making eye...
Fate and Free Will Quotes
(Chorus): "And for myself – because the gods brought my city its fate by siege, and from my father's house led me into the lot of a slave – , right or wrong, it is proper I accept a rul...
Lies and Deceit Quotes
(Electra): "What should we tell, for success? All the hurt we had from a parent, yes, from her? Fawn she may, but there's no mitigation: wolf-like and savage, my heart has a rage no mother's fawnin...
Religion Quotes
(Orestes): "Hermes of the Underworld, watching over paternal powers! I ask you, be my saviour and my ally; for my coming to this land is my return from exile." (Fragment 1; 1-3)
Gender Quotes
(Electra): "That Orestes may come here through some fortune is my prayer to you; and you must hear me, father! Grant me also to be much more chaste than my mother, and my hands to have greater piet...
Exile Quotes
(Orestes): "Hermes of the Underworld, watching over paternal powers! I ask you, be my saviour and my ally; for my coming to this land is my return from exile." (Fragment 1; 1-3)