Homer Quotes

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

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

"Her gray eyes clear, the goddess Athena answered, "Down from the skies I come to check your rage if only you will yield

Τῷ μὲν κλέος, ἄμμι δὲ πένθος.

On valour's side the odds of combat lie,
The brave live glorious, or lamented die;
The wretch who trembles in the field of fame,
Meets death, and worse than death, eternal shame.

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

Sing, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished — fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.

Then give him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him,
of Sleep and Death, who are twin brothers, and these two shall lay him
down presently within the rich countryside of broad Lykia.

"so evenly was strained their war and battle,
till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of
Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a
piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-taming
Trojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierce
blazing fire."

So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears,
and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spears
in their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. And
Hector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thick
in the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two best
men of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from the
ground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son of
crooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherd
lightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and little
doth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straight
against the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, double
gates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one bolt
fastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly planted
himself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, that
his cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and the
stone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loud
around, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and that
beneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with face
like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about his
body, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could have
held him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods,
and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to the
Trojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedily
some overleaped the wall, and some pour

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.

How ill, alas! do want and shame agree!

The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Samuel Butcher and Andrew Lang (1879)

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

I far excel every one else in the whole world,
of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth.

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