Homer Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“But I will gladly advise him -- I’ll hide nothing--”

“Her gifts were mixed with good and evil both.”

“Sitting, still, weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.”

“For there is nothing better in this world than that man and wife should be of one mind in a house.”

“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.”

“There is a time for making speeches, and a time for going to bed.”

“I swear by the greatest, grimmest oath that binds the happy gods.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If only the gods are willing. They rule the vaulting skies. They’re stronger than I to plan and drive things home.”

“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!”

“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.”

“My every impulse bends to what is right. Not iron, trust me, the heart with my breast. I am all compassion.”

“Nobody -- that’s my name. Nobody -- so my mother and father call me, all my friends.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Few sons are the equals of their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.”

I say no wealth is worth my life!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We men are wretched things.

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.

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.

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

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.

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.

His descent was like nightfall.

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

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

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.

Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on.

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

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.

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

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!

The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him.

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.

But listen to me first and swear an oath to use all your eloquence and strength to look after me and protect me.

My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius

“The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death.”

“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.”