The Odyssey Quotes

“The child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“There is nothing so good and lovely as when man and wife in their home dwell together in unity of mind and disposition.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Man's life is short enough as it is; if a man is unkind in himself, and has unkind thoughts in his heart, everyone prays that he will suffer in torment as long as he lives, and when he is dead everyone laughs at him. But if a man is generous in himself, with generous thoughts in his heart, his guest-friends spread his fame far and wide, to men everywhere, and there are many to call him noble.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“You are insolent and cruel, and think yourself a great man because you live in a little world, and that a bad one.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“If he had been the most heaven-taught minstrel in the whole world, on whose lips all hearers hang entranced, I could not have been more charmed as I sat in my hut and listened to him.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Antinous, your birth is good but your words evil.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“We did not get on much further, for in another moment we were caught by a terrific squall from the West that snapped the forestays of the mast so that it fell aft, while all the ship’s gear tumbled about at the bottom of the vessel. The mast fell upon the head of the helmsman in the ship’s stern, so that the bones of his head were crushed to pieces, and he fell overboard as though he were diving, with no more life left in him. “Then Jove let fly with his thunderbolts, and the ship went round and round, and was filled with fire and brimstone as the lightning struck it. The men all fell into the sea; they were carried about in the water round the ship, looking like so many sea-gulls, but the god presently deprived them of all chance of getting home again.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Alcinous’ daughter Nausicaa was the only one to stand firm. Athena put courage into her heart and took away the fear from her limbs, and she stood her ground and faced him.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“And here, take my veil and put it round your chest; it is enchanted, and you can come to no harm so long as you wear it. (Calypso)”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“She waxed tall: she turned womanly: she was beauty's mistress, dowered with every accomplishment of taste.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Yet I grant you that not the immortal gods themselves can forever shield the man they love from the common meed of death, or continually avert that fatal decree which lays every man prone in the grave at the end.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“I hope this fellow's chances of future good fortune are as great as is his prospect now of ever stringing the bow.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“but my longing to know what you were doing and the force of my affection for you—this it was that was the death of me.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“there is nothing like the sea for making havoc with a man, no matter how strong he is.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“then Ulysses again drew his mantle over his head and wept bitterly.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“for crying is cold comfort and one soon tires of it.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“I entreated her, and she did not fail to show excellent good sense, such as you would not expect to meet in a young person, for the young are generally given to thoughtlessness.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox’s horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one—even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“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.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heaven vouchsafes him health and strength, he thinks that he shall come to no harm hereafter, and even when the blessed gods bring sorrow upon him, he bears it as he needs must, and makes the best of it; for God almighty gives men their daily minds day by day.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“She mustn't mar her lovely face with tears”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“make haste and let us be off”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“<>
(cordial way of saying get out)”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“make haste and let us be off"
~cordial way of saying get out”
― Homer, The Odyssey by Homer (Annotated): Homers epic poem By Ancient Greek poet Homer Translated by Samuel Butler

“would to god I’d stayed right here in my own house with a third of all that wealth and they were still alive, all who died on the wide plain of Troy those years ago, far from the stallion-land of Argos.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“In Greek mythology, Memory (Mnemosyne) is said to be the mother of the Muses, because poetry, music, and storytelling are all imagined as modes by which people remember the times before they were born.”
― Emily Wilson, The Odyssey