Homer Quotes

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

Question me now about all other matters, but do not ask who I am, for fear you may increase in my heart it's burden of sorrow as I think back; I am very full of grief, and I should not sit in the house of somebody else with my lamentation and wailing. It is not good to go on mourning forever.

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

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

Yet verily these issues lie on the lap of the gods.

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.

Far from gay cities and the way of men.

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—

It is not right to exult over slain men.

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

Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin

Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

The business of wretches is wretched even in guarantee giving.

What I say will be a bit of boasting. The mad wine tells me to do it. Wine sets even a thoughtful man to singing, or sets him into softly laughing, sets him to dancing. Sometimes it tosses out a word that was better unspoken.

Achilles absent was Achilles still.

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

Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.

—so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car, sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs and churning, whirling rims—and the son of Peleus charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms—

It is the bold man who every time does best at home or abroad.

Hateful to me as are the gates of hell Is he who hiding one thing in his heart Utters another.

Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!

For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

A decent boldness ever meets with friends.

But they could neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be far from father or mother, he does not care about it.

A councillor ought not to sleep the whole night through - a man to whom the populace is entrusted and who has many responsibilities.

Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear

Light is the task when many share the toil.

The hearts of great men can be changed.

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.

A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.

Labor conquers all things.

His speech flowed from his tongue sweeter than honey.

The bitter dregs of Fortune's cup to drain.

Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.

[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.

Too many kings can ruin an army

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

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.

There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.

Man is the vainest of allcreatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heavenvouchsafes him health and strength, he thinks that he shall come tono harm hereafter, and even when the blessed gods bring sorrow uponhim, he bears it as he needs must, and makes the best of it; forGod Almighty gives men their daily minds day by day. I know allabout it, for I was a rich man once, and did much wrong in thestubbornness of my pride, and in the confidence that my father andmy brothers would support me; therefore let a man fear God in allthings always, and take the good that heaven may see fit to sendhim without vainglory.

When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker.

A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.

...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.

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

For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.

Who dares think one thing and another tell My heart detests him as the gates of hell.

There is satiety in all things in sleep and love-making in the loveliness of singing and the innocent dance.

Two friends-two bodies with one soul inspired.

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.

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

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

Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.

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.