"For fear, enforcing goodness, Must somewhere reign enthroned, And watch men’s ways, and teach them, Through self-inflicted sorrow, That sin is not condoned. What man, no longer nursing Fear at his heart – what city, Once fear is cast away, Will bow the knee to Justice As in an earlier day? Seek neither licence, where no laws compel, Nor slavery beneath a tyrant’s rod; Where liberty and rule are balanced well Success will follow as the gift of God,"

“Aeschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light.”

“I regard the Oresteia as probably on the whole the greatest spiritual work of man.”

“The tragic style of Aeschylus is stillimperfect. Now and then its constituents,epic and lyric, are not properly fused.He is often abrupt, immoderate, hard.To succeed him with a more artful tragedywas easy; in his almost superhumangreatness he is likely to remain unexcelled. . . .”

“Tragoedias primus in lucem Aeschylus protulit, sublimis et gravis et grandilocus saepe usque ad vitium, sed rudis in plerisque et incompositus: propter quod correctas eius fabulas in certamen deferre posterioribus poetis Athenienses permisere: suntque eo modo multi coronati.”

“He raised everything he touched to grandeur. The characters in his hands became heroic; the conflicts became tense and fraught with eternal issues.”

“Aeschylus is not impersonal but transpersonal, a believer in fate and moral responsibility at the same time.”