The Aeneid Quotes

“Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo - If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“The descent into Hell is easy”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Let me rage before I die.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way.”
― Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid

“Through pain I've learned to comfort suffering men”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Una Salus Victis Nullam Sperare Salutem - (Latin - written 19 BC)
The only hope for the doomed, is no hope at all...”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“...She nourishes the poison in her veins and is consumed by a secret fire.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
(The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this task and mighty labor lies.)”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Death's brother, sleep.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“But the queen--too long she has suffered the pain of love,
hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,
consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [...]
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling--
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Vera incessu patuit dea.
(The goddess indubitable was revealed in her step.)”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us an end to this as well. You've threaded the rocks resounding with Scylla's howling rabid dogs, and taken the brunt of the Cyclops' boulders, too. Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear. A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this. Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns our course holds firm for Latium. There Fate holds out a homeland, calm, at peace. There the gods decree the kingdom of Troy will rise again. Bear up. Save your strength for better times to come.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Friend, have the courage
To care little for wealth, and shape yourself,
You too, to merit godhead.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“the dewy night unrolls a heaven thickly jewelled with sparkling stars”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“A shifty, fickle object is woman, always. (Varium et mutabile semper femina.)”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“What good are prayers and shrines to a person mad with love? The flame keeps gnawing into her tender marrow hour by hour, and deep in her heart the silent wound lives on.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“So Aeneas pleaded, his face streaming tears.
Three times he tried to fling his arms around his neck,
three times he embraced--nothing...the phantom
sifting through his fingers,
light as wind, quick as a dream in flight.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“And as he spoke he wept.
Three times he tried to reach arms round that neck.
Three times the form, reached for in vain, escaped
Like a breeze between his hands, a dream on wings.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Duty bound, Aeneas, though he struggled with desire to calm and comfort her in all her pain, to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still with love if her, yet took the course heaven gave him and turned back to the fleet. ”
― Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid

“The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt”
― Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid

“Facilis descensus Averni:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras.
hoc opus, hic labor est.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“..and why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the sea
and what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl...”
― Virgil, The Aeneid