Quotes from The Iliad of Homer

“…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, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be more lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too--
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“And overpowered by memory
Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again
And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Beauty! Terrible Beauty!
A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause. ”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of 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, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other's arms.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim
was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,
in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-
not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,
in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

“Nay if even in the house of Hades the dead forget their dead, yet will I even there be mindful of my dear comrade.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“squirmed under the pressure. The leader squatted down and sorted through the”
― Lee Child, quote from Die Trying

“Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love; they had made two babies, and yet, only fifteen years later, the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing. Even this forty-million-year world that the Oversoul had preserved as if in ice, even it would melt before the fire. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from The Memory of Earth

“Would you mind doing this last thing for me? Pack my box with fivedozen liquor jugs?”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

“The fae were gone from America. Their departure point? Bon Temps, Louisiana. The woods behind my house.”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from Deadlocked

“It is only the darkness in our own hearts that will defeat us, in the end.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Crow

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.