Metamorphoses Quotes

“Ah, wretched me! that love is not to be cured by any herbs; and that those arts which afford relief to all, are of no avail for their master.”

“And although fire is the antagonist of heat, yet a moist vapor creates all things, and this discordant concord is suited for generation.”

“The Earth received the wild beasts, and the yielding air the birds. But an animated being, more holy than these, more fitted to receive higher faculties, and which could rule over the rest, was still wanting. Then Man was formed.”

“When an impious band madly raged to extinguish the Roman name in the blood of Cæsar, the human race was astonished with sudden terror at ruin so universal, and the whole earth shook with horror.”

“Many a one courted her; she hated all wooers; not able to endure, and quite unacquainted with man, she traverses the solitary parts of the woods, and she cares not what Hymen, what love, or what marriage means.”

“My beauty was the cause of my misfortune.”

“At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things, were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass, and nothing more than an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing, heaped together in the same spot.”

“But since thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my lyre, my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel!”

“Depart from my temple, and cover your heads, and loosen the garments girt around you, and throw behind your backs the bones of your great mother.”

“They say that the Giants aspired to the sovereignty of Heaven, and piled the mountains, heaped together, even to the lofty stars.”

“I must not now employ a lengthened exhortation; pour forth all your might, so the occasion requires. Open your abodes, and, each obstacle removed, give full rein to your streams.”

“I am either deceived, or I am injured.”

“He gave utterance to sighs fetched from the bottom of his heart (for it is not allowed the celestial features to be bathed with tears).”

“They both distrust the advice of heaven; but what harm will it do to try?”

“I wish that I had not been acquainted with the future.”

“I descended from the top of Olympus, and, a God in a human shape, I surveyed the earth. ’Twere an endless task to enumerate how great an amount of guilt was everywhere discovered.”

“But do thou have a care, my son, that I be not the occasion of a gift fatal to thee, and while the matter still permits, alter thy intentions.”

“There is a way on high, easily seen in a clear sky, and which, remarkable for its very whiteness, receives the name of the Milky Way. Along this is the way for the Gods above to the abode of the great Thunderer and his royal palace.”

“You would suppose that men had conspired to be wicked; let all men speedily feel that vengeance which they deserve to endure, for such is my determination.”

“Her abode is concealed in the lowest recesses of a cave, wanting sun, and not pervious to any wind, dismal and filled with benumbing cold; and which is ever without fire, and ever abounding with darkness.”

“She both torments and is tormented at the same moment, and is ever her own punishment.”

“His garment was a skin torn from a lion; his weapon was a lance with shining steel, and a javelin; and a courage superior to any weapon.”