Homer > Quotes

“Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!”
― Homer

“Even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
― Homer, Iliad

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
― Homer

“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.”
― Homer

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!”
― Homer

“If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer.”
― Homer

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“The journey is the thing.”
― Homer

“Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“youth is quick in feeling but weak in judgement.”
― Homer

“Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, which brought countless ills upon the Acheans.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Life is largely a matter of expectation. ”
― Homer

“The greatest thing is for a man and woman to live together, as husband and wife; confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
― Homer

“There will be killing till the score is paid.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“[I]t is the wine that leads me on,
the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing
at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the
man to dancing... it even
tempts him to blurt out stories
better never told.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“some things you will think of yourself,...some things God will put into your mind”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die.”
― Homer, Iliad

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“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." Odyssey”
― Homer

“I have no interest at all in food and drink, but only in slaughter and blood and the agonized groans of mangled men”
― Homer

“Tell me, O muse, of travellers far and wide”
― Homer

“Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Each man delights in the work that suits him best.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“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”
― Homer

“Choose well.”
― Homer

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“So, the gods don't hand out all their gifts at once, not build and brains and flowing speech to all. One man may fail to impress us with his looks but a god can crown his words with beauty, charm, and men look on with delight when he speaks out. Never faltering, filled with winning self-control, he shines forth at assembly grounds and people gaze at him like a god when he walks through the streets. Another man may look like a deathless one on high but there's not a bit of grace to crown his words. Just like you, my fine, handsome friend.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Why cover the same ground again? ... It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too--
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.”
― Homer

“Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.”
― Homer

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”
― Homer

“Immortals are never alien to one another.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Aries in his many fits knows no favorites.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races. ”
― Homer

“The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others.”
― Homer

“Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”
― Homer, The Iliad

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

“For they imagined as they wished--that it was a wild shot,/ an unintended killing--fools, not to comprehend/ they were already in the grip of death./ But glaring under his brows Odysseus answered:

'You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it/ home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,/ twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared/ bid for my wife while I was still alive./ Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,/ contempt for what men say of you hereafter./ Your last hour has come. You die in blood.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.”
― Homer, The Iliad & The Odyssey

“The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken”
― Homer

“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.”
― Homer, The Iliad