Beowulf Quotes

“As you see it it is, while the seeing lasts, dark nightmare-history, time-as-coffin; but where the water was rigid there will be fish, and men will survive on their flesh till spring. It’s coming, my brother. . . . Though you murder the world, transmogrify life into I and it, strong searching roots will crack your cave and rain will cleanse it: The world will burn green, sperm build again.”

“I am mad with joy. –At least I think it’s joy. Strangers have come, and it’s a whole new game.”

“They have seen my strength for themselves, have watched me rise from the darkness of war, dripping with my enemies’ blood. I drove five great giants into chains, chased all of that race from the earth. I swam in the blackness of night, hunting monsters out of the ocean, and killing them one by one; death was my errand and the fate they had earned. Now Grendel and I are called together, and I’ve come.”

“Not even the sharpest of swords could have cut it [Grendel’s hand] through, broken it off the monster’s arm and ended its life, as Beowulf had done armed only with his bare hands.”