Quotes from Homer

Lighthearted boys and girls were harvesting the grapes in woven baskets, while on a resonant harp a boy among them played a tune of longing, singing low with delicate voice a summer dirge. The others, breaking out in song for the joy of it, kept time together as they skipped along.

A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.

Trojans and Achaians, who like wolves sprang upon one another, with man against man in the onfall.

Yet if our chief for plunder only fight, The spoils of Ilion shall thy loss requite, Whene'er, by Jove's decree, our conquering powers Shall humble to the dust her lofty towers.

A man who has suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.

Sit down and hold your tongue as I bid you for if I once begin to lay my hands about you, though all heaven were on your side it would profit you nothing.

the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator.

Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin

That is the god's work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come...

No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is fated, but as for fate, I think that no man yet has escaped it once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor coward.

Far from the hateful cause of all his woes. Neleus his treasures one long year detains, As long he groan'd in Philacus' chains: Meantime, what anguish and what rage combined For lovely Pero rack'd his labouring mind!

Better to be the hireling of a stranger, and serve a man of mean estate whose living is but small, than be the ruler over all these dead and gone.

Nastes and Amphimachus, the illustrious sons of Nomion - but Nastes, chilldish fool that he was, Went into battle decked out in gold like a girl. But gold could not help him escape a horrible death at the hands of Aeacus' grandson, the swift Achilles, In the bed of the river, and Achilles, fierce ad fiery, Took care of all his gold.

Achilleus started awake, staring,        and drove his hands together, and spoke, and his words were sorrowful:        Ã¢â'¬Å"Oh, wonder! Even in the house of Hades there is left something,        a soul and an image, but there is no real heart of life in it.

The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.

As the youth came on in front of the others, he got the bronze in his chest beside the right nipple. On through his shoulder it went and he fell to earth in the dust like a sooth black poplar whose branchy top falls in the low grassland of a mighty marsh to the gleaming ax of some chariot-maker, who leaves t to dry by the banks of a river that he may bend him a rim for a beautiful chariot. Even such was the fall of Anthemion's son Simoeisius

but these lay dead on the ground, far dearer now to the vultures than to their wives.

But death is a thing that comes to all alike. Not even the gods can fend it away from a man they love, when once the destructive doom of leveling death has fastened upon him.

There was a world ... or was it all a dream?

For nothing could be better than when two live in one house, their minds in harmony, husband and wife. Their enemies are jealous, their friends delighted, and they have great honor.

Upon the earth appear'd, weeping, they bore Brave Hector out; and on the fun'ral pile Laying the glorious dead, applied the torch.

Now they made all secure in the fast black ship, and, setting out the wine bowls all a-brim, they made libation to the gods, the undying, the ever-new, most of all to the grey-eyed daughter of Zeus. And the prow sheared through the night into the dawn. (Translation by Robert Fitzgerald 1961)

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus        and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,        hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls        of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting 5     of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished

Tell me about a complicated man, Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost... ...And where he went, and who he met, the pain He suffered on the sea, and how he worked To bring his men back home. - Emily Wilson Translation of Homer's Odyssey