Homer Quotes

…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

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

~ Homer

[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.

~ Homer

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.

~ 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

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.

~ Homer

Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

~ Homer

For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.

~ Homer

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.

~ Homer

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!

~ Homer

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.

~ Homer

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—

~ Homer

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.

~ Homer

I would disapprove of another hospitable man who was excessive in friendship, as of one excessive in hate. In all things balance is better.

~ Homer

Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin

~ Homer

—so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car, sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs and churning, whirling rims—and the son of Peleus charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms—

~ Homer

Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!

~ Homer

Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.

~ Homer

No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.

~ Homer

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

~ Homer

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

~ Homer

And empty words are evil.

~ Homer

Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on

~ Homer

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.

~ Homer

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!

~ Homer

but sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away

~ Homer

For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother

~ Homer

For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.

~ Homer

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.

~ Homer

Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.

~ Homer

But they could neither of them persuade me, 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

...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.

~ Homer

Man is the vainest of allcreatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heavenvouchsafes him health and strength, he thinks that he shall come tono harm hereafter, and even when the blessed gods bring sorrow uponhim, he bears it as he needs must, and makes the best of it; forGod Almighty gives men their daily minds day by day. I know allabout it, for I was a rich man once, and did much wrong in thestubbornness of my pride, and in the confidence that my father andmy brothers would support me; therefore let a man fear God in allthings always, and take the good that heaven may see fit to sendhim without vainglory.

~ Homer

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.

~ Homer

Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear

~ Homer

Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.

~ Homer

The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.

~ Homer

When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker.

~ Homer

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

~ Homer

...an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself...

~ Homer