Callimachus Quotes

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

“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

“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

“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

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