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

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“The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract, let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales

“Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.”
― Karen Maitland, quote from Company of Liars

“The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from The Man Who Would Be King

“Your mortal attachments are like a puppet’s strings," Avari said, both hands clasped casually at his back. "One need only pluck the right cord to make the puppet dance." His smile was almost creepier than his threats. "Dance, reaper!”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from With All My Soul

“I want to give you something.” He slid the ring off his finger. “Up until this week, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to wear this
ring. Not as a piece of jewelry, but because I thought I could find meaning in saving others, in being a hero. But the meaning I’ve finally found in my
life is from meeting you.” He set the ring on the palm of his hand and held it out. “I want you to have it.”
― Scott Speer, quote from Immortal City

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