“What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he doth this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes?”

“Soon all of you immortalsWill be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for?Have you run out of thunderbolts?”

“Young man, two are the forces most precious to mankind.The first is Demeter, the Goddess.She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her -- and she sustains humanity with solid food.Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin, bringing the counterpart to bread: wineand the blessings of life's flowing juices.His blood, the blood of the grape,lightens the burden of our mortal misery.Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour outto offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.”

“This town must learn,even against its will, how much it coststo scorn a God's mysteries and to be purged.So shall I vindicate my virgin motherand reveal myself to mortals as a God,the son of God.”

“Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.”

“Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.”

“O Dionysus, Son of God,do you see our sufferings?Do you see your faithfulin helpless agony before the oppressor?O Lord, come down from Olympus,shake your golden thyrsusand stifle the murderer's insolent fury.”