Homer Quotations | Page 4

There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.

...he'll never lie - the man is far too wise.

But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’ I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

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

A guest never forgets the host who has treated him kindly.

[B]ut it is only what happens, when they die, to all mortals. The sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, and once the spirit has let the white bones, all the rest of the body is made subject to the fire's strong fury, but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.

These nights are endless, and a man can sleep through them, or he can enjoy listening to stories, and you have no need to go to bed before it is time. Too much sleep is only a bore. And of the others, any one whose heart and spirit urge him can go outside and sleep, and then, when the dawn shows, breakfast first, then go out to tend the swine of our master. But we two, sitting here in the shelter, eating and drinking, shall entertain each other remembering and retelling our sad sorrows. For afterwards a man who has suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.

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

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.

Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back! Stand beside me, Athena, fire me with daring, fierce as the day we ripped Troy's glittering crown of towers down. Stand by me - furious now as then, my bright-eyed one - and I would fight three hundred men, great goddess, with you to brace me, comrade-in-arms in battle!

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

Have patience, heart.

Too many kings can ruin an army

Generations of men are like the leaves. In winter, winds blow them down to earth, but then, when spring season comes again, the budding wood grows more. And so with men: one generation grows, another dies away.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.

There is no fouler fiend than a woman when her mind is bent to evil.

Modesty is of no use to a beggar.

Behold, on wrong Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong.

It [revenge] is sweeter far than flowing honey.

Everything flows and nothing stays.

By turns the nine delight to sing

Who ne'er knew salt, or heard the billows roar.

Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.

How delicate her feet who shuns the ground, Stepping a-tiptoe on the heads of men.

The force of union conquers all.

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

Over the wine-dark sea.

No trust is to be placed in women.

Nothing feebler does earth nurture than man, Of all things breathing and moving.

A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.

Oh, my tattered rags are caught on your coffee table.

Young people are thoughtless as a rule.

Oall the creatures that creep and breathe on earth, there is none more wretched than man.

I would rather be a serf in a poor man's house and be above ground than reign among the dead.

All men have need of the gods.

For I am yearning to visit the limits of the all-nurturing Earth, and Oceans, from whom the gods are sprung.

Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.

And now I'm using sarcasm, to confess the whole thing so later I could say I already told you.

Miserable mortals who like leaves at one moment flame with life eating the produce of the land and at another moment weakly perish.

It's man's to fight, but heaven's to give success.

Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!

A sound mind in a manly body.

The natural thing, my lord, men and women joined.

True friends appear less moved than counterfeit.

Think not to match yourself against the gods, for men that walk the earth cannot hold their own with the immortals.

Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die.

A small rock holds back a great wave.

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

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

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

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 noon When a man will take my life in battle too-- flinging a spear perhaps Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.

Immortals are never alien to one another.

Tell me, O muse, of travellers far and wide

All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.

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.

...if fifty bands of men surrounded us/ and every sword sang for your blood,/ you could make off still with their cows and sheep.

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.

The journey is the thing.

If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer.

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

Aries in his many fits knows no favorites.

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

Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death

All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.

youth is quick in feeling but weak in judgement.

I have no interest at all in food and drink, but only in slaughter and blood and the agonized groans of mangled men

Do not beg me by knees or by parents you dog! I only wish I were savagely wrathful enough to hack up your corpse and eat it raw

For they imagined as they wished--that it was a wild shot,/ an unintended killing--fools, not to comprehend/ they were already in the grip of death./ But glaring under his brows Odysseus answered: 'You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it/ home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,/ twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared/ bid for my wife while I was still alive./ Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,/ contempt for what men say of you hereafter./ Your last hour has come. You die in blood.

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

He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.

They did not know her-gods are hard for mortals to recognize.

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.

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!

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

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.

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.

And for yourself, may the gods grant you your heart's desire, a husband and a home, and the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, when a man and woman live together with one hear and mind, bringing joy to their friends and grief to their foes.

The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

Even the bravest cannot fight beyond his power

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

His descent was like nightfall.

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

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

Strife and Confusion joined the fight, along with cruel Death, who seized one wounded man while still alive and then another man without a wound, while pulling the feet of one more corpse out from the fight. The clothes Death wore around her shoulders were dyed red with human blood.

down from his brow she ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters full of blooms

[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs, laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing... it even tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.

Now from his breast into the eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big serf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

I say no wealth is worth my life.

Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable

I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.

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

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.

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.

Reproach is infinite, and knows no end So voluble a weapon is the tongue; Wounded, we wound; and neither side can fail For every man has equal strength to rail.

We men are wretched things.

Be generous in the bedroom. Share your sandwich.

Not vain the weakest, if their force unite.