Callimachus > Quotes

“Mega biblion, mega kakon (Big book, big evil)”
― Callimachus

“اّه يا روحى لا تطمحى الى الحياة الخالدة.ولكن استنفدى حدود الممكن”
― Callimachus

“A poet's fiction should at least be plausible.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“News of your death.

Tears, and the memory
of all the times we talked the sun down the sky.

You, Herakleitos of Halikarnassos,
once my friend, now vacant dust,
whose poems are nightingales
beyond the clutch of the unseen god.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“They told me,Heraclitus,they told me
you are dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear
and bitter tears to shed...
I wept when i remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking,and sent him down the sky.”
― Callimachus, The Works Of Callimachus, Translated Into English Verse: The Hymns And Epigrams From The Greek, With The Coma Berenices

“Here Philippos the father buried his son Nikoteles,
a child of twelve and his dearest hope.”
― Kallimachos

“He stooped to put flowers on his stepmother's tomb,
Thinking she'd changed since meeting her doom.

He died when her gravestone fell on his head.
Stepmothers are dangerous even when dead.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“When I heard you were dead, Heraclitus,
tears came, and I remembered how often
you and I had talked the sun to bed.
Long ago you turned to ashes, my Halicarnassian friend,
but your poems, your Nightingales, still live.
Hades clutches all things yet can't touch these.”
― Kallimachos

“Un libro extenso es un gran mal.”
― Calímaco

“Who are you, O shipwrecked stranger?
Leontichos found your corpse on the beach,
buried you in this grave
and cried thinking of his own hazardous life.
For he knows no rest:
he too roams over the sea like a gull.”
― Kallimachos

“They brought me word of your death,
Heraklieitos,
and I wept for you
remembering how often we watched the sun
setting as we talked.

Dear Halikarnassian friend,
you lie elsewhere now
and are mere ashes;
yet your songs—your nightingales—will live,
and never will the underworld,
destroying everything,
touch them with its deadly hand.”
― Kallimachos

“...ἀμάρτυρον οὐδὲν ἀείδω...”
― Callimachus

“Excessive knowledge

is an unwieldy ill; a man with a loose
tongue is indeed a child with a knife.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“All of the Cyclades are numinous islands,
but Delos lies like a poem in the sea.
She washed and cradled the archpoet Apollo
and first took him for god.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“Passerby, do not wish me well with your sour heart.
Go away. And I shall be well by your being gone.”
― Kallimachos

“A big book is a big bore.”
― Callimachus

“Wealth without goodness is a worthless increase,
and goodness needs substance.”
― Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

“Walls and stones may fall in the wind
when it blows like a Thracian torrent,
but a god stands forever”
― Callimachus