Homer Quotes

Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you to the field where men win fame.

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.

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

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!

I say no wealth is worth my life.

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

And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too. For in my day I have had many bitter and painful experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more.

And so their spirits soared
as they took positions own the passageways of battle
all night long, and the watchfires blazed among them.
Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glittering
round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory
when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm...
all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts
the boundless bright air and all the stars shine clear
and the shepherd's heart exults - so many fires burned
between the ships and the Xanthus' whirling rapids
set by the men of Troy, bright against their walls.
A thousand fires were burning there on the plain
and beside each fire sat fifty fighting men
poised in the leaping blaze, and champing oats
and glistening barley, stationed by their chariots,
stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne.

The rose Dawn might have found them weeping still had not grey-eyed Athena slowed the night when night was most profound, and held the Dawn under the Ocean of the East. That glossy team, Firebright and Daybright, the Dawn's horses that draw her heavenward for men- Athena stayed their harnessing.

Goddess of song, teach me the story
of a hero.

It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.

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.

Have patience, heart.

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

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