Familiar Quotations / A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to / Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature

by Unknown

Phædra. Frag. 862.

If I am Sophocles, I am not mad; and if I am mad, I am not Sophocles.

Vit. Anon. p. 64 (Plumptre's Trans.).

Footnotes

[696:2] The saying "Call no man happy before he dies" was ascribed to Solon. Herodotus, i. 32.

[696:3] See Marlowe, page [40].

[697:1] See Shakespeare, page [133].

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EURIPIDES.  484-406 b. c.

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, and age no longer is a burden to them.