Life & Wisdom Quote by Sophocles

Relief has a dark sense of humor: it doesn’t just cancel pain, it can retrofit it into something almost likable. Sophocles’ line captures that psychic trick with disarming elegance. “When trouble ends even troubles please” isn’t a motivational poster; it’s a recognition that suffering becomes narratable once it’s safely in the past. The danger is gone, so the mind converts threat into story, ordeal into proof of endurance, misfortune into meaning. Trouble, after all, is often unbearable in real time and irresistibly tidy in retrospect.

The wording matters. “Even” does the heavy lifting, signaling a reversal of expected emotion: what should repel begins to attract. “Please” pushes further, implying not merely acceptance but a perverse sweetness. Sophocles is attentive to the way humans aestheticize survival. The same species that panics during a storm will romanticize it the next day, turning fear into a good anecdote and chaos into character development.

In the context of Greek tragedy, that’s not cozy; it’s chillingly practical. Sophoclean drama is built on reversals and recognitions, on the moment when catastrophe clarifies what was always true. The line suggests how quickly people can domesticate horror once the chorus stops wailing. It also hints at moral risk: if ended troubles can “please,” then memory can betray victims, soften injustice, and teach the audience the wrong lesson - that pain was worth it because it produced catharsis. Sophocles understands catharsis as both cure and temptation.