Quotes by Homer

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.There will come a dawn or sunset or high noonWhen a man will take my life in battle too--flinging a spear perhapsOr whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”

“Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,feasts for the dogs and birds,and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.”

“Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall”

“And overpowered by memoryBoth men gave way to grief. Priam wept freelyFor man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouchingBefore Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,Now for his father, now for Patroclus once againAnd their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.”

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”

“Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on”

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.”

“[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.”

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”

“Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.”

“You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!”

“Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.”

“Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other's arms.”

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they saythat we devise their misery. But theythemselves- in their depravity- designgrief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”

“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”

“Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the storyof that man skilled in all ways of contending,the wanderer, harried for years on end”

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

“...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”

“Nay if even in the house of Hades the dead forget their dead, yet will I even there be mindful of my dear comrade.”

“Why cover the same ground again? ... It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly.”

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”

“Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”

“There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”

“…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.”

“You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?”

“Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.”

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.”

“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.”

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”

“some things you will think of yourself,...some things God will put into your mind”

“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier;I have seen worse sights than this.”

“down from his browshe ran his curlslike thick hyacinth clustersfull of blooms”

“Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?”

“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother”

“Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!”

“By hook or by crook this peril too shall be something that we remember”

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”

“The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.”

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”

“No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”

“Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.”

“The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.”

“I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!”

“Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.”

“Each man delights in the work that suits him best.”

“youth is quick in feeling but weak in judgement.”

“Even a fool learns something once it hits him.”

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!”

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”

“There will be killing till the score is paid.”

“Aries in his many fits knows no favorites.”

“Immortals are never alien to one another.”

“Life is largely a matter of expectation.”

“His descent was like nightfall.”

“Too many kings can ruin an army”

“We men are wretched things.”

“And empty words are evil.”

“The journey is the thing.”

“out of sight,out of mind”

“My name is Nobody.”