Quotes About Fate

For many a Trojan, many a Greek, that day Prone in the dust, and side by side, were laid.

So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men live on to bear such torments - the gods live free of sorrows. -Achilles to Priam

One and the same lot for the man who hangs back and the man who battles hard. The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death

Patroclus equal of Ares came out; and that was the beginning of his end.

for when the gods have made up their minds they do not change them lightly.

O old friend, if we two escaping this war were destined to be ageless and deathless always, I myself would not fight in the frontlines, nor would I send you into battle where men win glory; but now, since the fates of death stand by us in their thousands, which a mortal man cannot escape nor flee, let us go—either we will give the right to vaunt to someone else or he to us.

885]   "Brag while you can, Hector. Zeus and Apollo Have given you

And he, Achilles, will rouse his companion Patroclus, whom shining Hector with his spear will kill in front of Ilion, after Patroclus has destroyed a multitude of other young men, among them my own son, godlike Sarpedon; and enraged at Patroclus dying, godlike Achilles will kill Hector. And from that point, then, without respite, I will effect a retreat from the ships, all the way until that time the Achaeans?70 capture steep Ilion through the designs of Athena.

Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth, our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man. So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees, he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years. But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times, bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart. Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth, turn as the days turn... as the father of men and gods make each day dawn.

reading of birds could not keep off dark destruction

But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.

6.?ILIÁDOS Z

Men—let one of them die, another live, however their luck may run. Let Zeus decide the fates of the men of Troy and men of Argos both, to his deathless heart's content—that is only right.

Untimely sent; they on the battle plain Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs, And carrion birds; but so had Jove decreed

Take my advice then, and set aside all thoughts of avenging your son. Many a finer and stronger man than he has been killed before now and will be killed hereafter. We can hardly expect to keep our eyes on the pedigree of every man on Earth.

However, what is done is better left alone, though we resent it still, and we must curb our hearts perforce...as for my death, when Zeus and the other deathless gods appoint it, let it come.

10.?ILIÁDOS K

The War-god has no favourites: he has been known to kill the man who thought he was going to do the killing

My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another.

Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that [the gods] devise their misery. But [men] themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.

Xanthus, you waste your breath by prophesying my destruction. I know well enough that I am doomed to perish here...Nevertheless, I am not going to stop until I have given the Trojans their bellyful of war.

bitch that I am, vicious, scheming- horror to freeze the heart oh how I wish that first day my mother brought me into the light some black whirlwind had rushed me out to the mountains or into the surf where the roaring breakers crash and drag and the waves had swept me off before all this had happened

Yet his reading of birds could not keep off dark destruction

Oh son of Polybus!" the prince replies