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Homer Quotes

52 of the best book quotes from Homer
01
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“So, surrender to sleep at last. What a misery, keeping watch through the night, wide awake -- you’ll soon come up from under all your troubles.”
Homer
author
Odyssey
book
hoping
work
sleeping
night
misery
concepts
02
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“Nobody -- that’s my name. Nobody -- so my mother and father call me, all my friends.”
Homer
author
Parents
person
friendship
names
concepts
03
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“Her gifts were mixed with good and evil both.”
04
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“Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.”
Homer
author
05
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“And now, tell me and tell me true. Where have you been wandering, and in what countries have you travelled? Tell us of the peoples themselves, and of their cities—who were hostile, savage and uncivilised, and who, on the other hand, hospitable and humane.”
Homer
author
06
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“God of the golden wand, why have you come? A beloved, honored friend, but it’s been so long, your visits much too rare. Tell me what’s on your mind. I’m eager to do it, whatever I can do . . . whatever can be done.”
Homer
author
God
person
friendship
concept
07
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“There is a time for making speeches, and a time for going to bed.”
Homer
author
Ulysses
character
words
sleeping
talking
concepts
08
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“Would that I were still young and strong as I was in those days, for then some one of you swineherds would give me a cloak both out of good will and for the respect due to a brave soldier; but now people look down upon me because my clothes are shabby.”
Homer
author
09
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“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.”
10
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“For there is nothing better in this world than that man and wife should be of one mind in a house.”
Homer
author
Wife
Husband
persons
11
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Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.
Homer
author
Odysseus
character
bravery
strength
concepts
12
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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!
Homer
author
Hektor
character
war
cowardice
concepts
13
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The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him.
Homer
author
Hektor
character
courage
death
pride
concepts
14
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Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.
Homer
author
Parents
person
Achilles
Patroclus
characters
15
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But listen to me first and swear an oath to use all your eloquence and strength to look after me and protect me.
Homer
author
Calchas
character
protecting
concept
16
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I say no wealth is worth my life!
Homer
author
Achilles
character
life
worth
money
concepts
17
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My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius
Homer
author
Achilles
character
life
concept
18
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“But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.”
Homer
author
love
death
fate
concepts
19
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“Captain, this is madness! High time you thought of your own home at last, if it really is your fate to make it back alive and reach your well-built house and native land.”
Homer
author
home
madness
fate
travel
concepts
20
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“Quick, dear boy, come in, let me look at you, look to my heart’s content -- under my own roof, the rover home at last.”
Homer
author
21
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“But I will gladly advise him -- I’ll hide nothing--”
Homer
author
truth
advice
mentor
concepts
22
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“Sitting, still, weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home.”
Homer
author
journeys
home
crying
concepts
23
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“No need my unlucky one, to grieve here any longer, no, don’t waste your life away. Now I am willing heart and soul to send you off at last.”
Homer
author
grief
soul
heart
luck
concepts
24
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“If only the gods are willing. They rule the vaulting skies. They’re stronger than I to plan and drive things home.”
Homer
author
God
person
power
strength
concepts
25
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“Passage home? Never. Surely you’re plotting something else, goddess, urging me -- in a raft -- to cross the ocean’s mighty gulfs. So vast, so full of danger not even the deep-sea ships can make it through, swift as they are and buoyed up by the winds of Zeus himself.”
Homer
author
God
person
home
dangerous
concepts
26
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“I won’t set foot on a raft until you show good faith, until you consent to swear, goddess, a binding oath you’ll never plot some new intrigue to harm me!”
Homer
author
faith
promises
concepts
27
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“I swear by the greatest, grimmest oath that binds the happy gods.”
Homer
author
God
person
promises
concept
28
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“Never. All I have in mind and devise for you are the very plans I’d fashion for myself if I were in your straits.”
Homer
author
29
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“My every impulse bends to what is right. Not iron, trust me, the heart with my breast. I am all compassion.”
Homer
author
trust
compassion
right
concepts
30
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“Good luck to you, even so. Farewell! But if you only knew, down deep, what pains are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore.”
Homer
author
31
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“Few sons are the equals of their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.”
Homer
author
children
fathers
concepts
32
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“But you, brave and adept from this day on . . . there’s hope that you will reach your goal . . . the journey that stirs you now is not far off.”
Homer
author
33
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There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.
Homer
author
Aphrodite
character
love
concept
34
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Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
lies
concept
35
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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.
Homer
author
Hektor
character
life
concept
36
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Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
life
concept
37
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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.
Homer
author
Glaucus
character
death
life
concepts
38
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We men are wretched things.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
39
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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.
Homer
author
Hektor
character
fate
concept
40
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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.
Homer
author
Hektor
character
death
concept
41
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No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
Homer
author
destiny
concept
42
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Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
Homer
author
Achilles
Lycaon
characters
death
concept
43
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Death and the strong force of fate are waiting. There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon when a man will take my life in battle too -- flinging a spear perhaps or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
death
war
concepts
44
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His descent was like nightfall.
Homer
author
night
stealth
concepts
45
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There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
Homer
author
Zeus
character
pain
concept
46
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Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!
Homer
author
Chiefs of Troy
Helen
characters
beauty
concept
47
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And overpowered by memory both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself, now for his father, now for Patroclus once again and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
sadness
grief
concepts
48
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Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
anger
concept
49
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The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.
Homer
author
Achilles
character
50
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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.
Homer
author
51
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“The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death.”
Homer
author
Achilles
character
honor
concept
52
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“If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this.”

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