Ted Hughes

Agamemnon (Oresteia, p.44):

True praise needs none of these trimmings. And the gods' greatest gift that brings a man to the end of his days in peace is a nose to sniff out such imprudence.

Tereus (Tales from Ovid, p.223):

Revenge had swallowed her whole being. She had plunged into a labyrinth of plotting
where good and evil, right and wrong,
forgot their differences.

Phedre (p.28)

When passion boils, reason evaporates.

Phedre (Act 5, p.72)

Has it occurred to you they may hate you enough to grant it? Sometimes the gods accept our prayers just for the opportunity it gives them to punish us in full, at our own request.

Alcestis (p.9)

When the gods decide on death medicine simply fails. Then the best of doctors becomes a learned book or a stupid book, that nobody can decipher.

All the hospitals on earth become useless monuments. No better than pebbles on a beach.

Alcestis (p.15)

We must pray. God only seems to be silent because we are so deafened by our own babble.