Homer Quotes

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.

If you are one of earth’s inhabitants, how blest your father, and your gentle mother, blest all your kin. I know what happiness must send the warm tears to their eyes, each time they see their wondrous child go to the dancing! But one man’s destiny is more than blest — he who prevails, and takes you as his bride. Never have I laid eyes on equal beauty in man or woman. I am hushed indeed.

...of all creatures that breathe and move on earth
none is more to be pitied than a man.

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!

Well then, what shall I go through first,
what shall I save for last?

Ἦ καὶ κυανέῃσιν ἐπ' ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων·
ἀμβρόσιαι δ' ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῤῥώσαντο ἄνακτος
κρατὸς ἀπ' ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ' ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον.

The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.

Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen? Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart

Now always be the best, my boy, the bravest,
and hold your head up high above the others.

She who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter
grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven.

No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.

The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all.

Welcome words on their lips, and murder in their hearts.

The journey is the thing.

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.