Quotes from The Metamorphoses

“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
"Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Fas est ab hoste doceri.
One should learn even from one's enemies.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“God himself helps those who dare.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
Always, for ever and new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Love is the force that leaves you colorless”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Venus of Eryx, from her mountain throne,
Saw Hades and clasped her swift-winged son, and said:
'Cupid, my child, my warrior, my power,
Take those sure shafts with which you conquer all,
And shoot your speedy arrows to the heart
Of the great god to whom the last lot fell
When the three realms were drawn. Your mastery
Subdues the gods of heaven and even Jove,
Subdues the ocean's deities and him,
Even him, who rules the ocean's deities.
Why should Hell lag behind? Why not there too
Extend your mother's empire and your own....?

Then Cupid, guided by his mother, opened
His quiver of all his thousand arrows
Selected one, the sharpest and the surest,
The arrow most obedient to the bow,
And bent the pliant horn against his knee
And shot the barbed shaft deep in Pluto's heart.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, he [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“And now the measure of my song is done:
The work has reached its end; the book is mine,
None shall unwrite these words: nor angry Jove,
Nor war, nor fire, nor flood,
Nor venomous time that eats our lives away.
Then let that morning come, as come it will,
When this disguise I carry shall be no more,
And all the treacherous years of life undone,
And yet my name shall rise to heavenly music,
The deathless music of the circling stars.
As long as Rome is the Eternal City
These lines shall echo from the lips of men,
As long as poetry speaks truth on earth,
That immortality is mine to wear.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“The god of Delos, proud in victory,
Saw Cupid draw his bow's taut arc, and said:
'Mischievous boy, what are a brave man's arms
To you? That gear becomes my shoulders best.
My aim is sure; I wound my enemies,
I wound wild beasts; my countless arrows slew
But now the bloated Python, whose vast coils
Across so many acres spread their blight.
You and your loves! You have your torch to light them!Let that content you; never claim my fame!'


And Venus' son replied: 'Your bow, Apollo,
May vanquish all, but mine shall vanquish you.
As every creature yields to power divine,
So likewise shall your glory yield to mine.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“...et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. (to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature.)”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Even as a cow she was lovely.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“And besides, we lovers fear everything”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.
And he sets his mind to unknown arts.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“You will go most safely by the middle way.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“She made up prayers and said them,
Worshipping unknown gods with unknown singing,
Her customary magic, which would cover
The white moon’s face and darken the sun with cloud.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“for no god may undo what another god has done...”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Ceza kaldırılabilir; ama suç insanın içinde sonsuza kadar yaşar.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

“Crédule enfant, à quoi bon ces vains efforts pour saisir une fugitive apparence? L'objet de ton désir n'existe pas! ... Cette ombre que tu vois, c'est le reflet de ton image.”
― Ovid, quote from The Metamorphoses

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Popular quotes

“You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?"

I will tell Him that His press agents could have done with a writing lesson or two, I said. To myself.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from A Gathering Light

“The root destruction of religion in the country, which throughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GPU-NKVD, could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounded up on every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all and who, for many long years to come, would be called 'nuns' in transit prisons and in camps.

True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote:

You can pray freely
But just so God alone can hear.

(She received a ten-year sentence for these verses.) A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children! In the twenties the religious education of children was classified as a political crime under Article 58-10 of the Code--in other words, counterrevolutionary propaganda! True, one was permitted to renounce one's religion at one's trial: it didn't often happen but it nonetheless did happen that the father would renounce his religion and remain at home to raise the children while the mother went to the Solovetsky Islands. (Throughout all those years women manifested great firmness in their faith.) All persons convicted of religious activity received 'tenners,' the longest term then given.

(In those years, particularly in 1927, in purging the big cities for the pure society that was coming into being, they sent prostitutes to the Solovetsky Islands along with the 'nuns.' Those lovers of a sinful earthly life were given three-year sentences under a more lenient article of the Code. The conditions in prisoner transports, in transit prisons, and on the Solovetsky Islands were not of a sort to hinder them from plying their merry trade among the administrators and the convoy guards. And three years later they would return with laden suitcases to the places they had come from. Religious prisoners, however, were prohibited from ever returning to their children and their home areas.)”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1

“She smiled at him, the way she always did, even when he woke up at oh-what-the-fuck-hundred.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night

“The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all;”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

“Galaxy 500′s cover of Yoko Ono’s Listen, the Snow Is Falling, or Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, The Chambermaids Down in the Berries,”
― Anne Frasier, quote from Hush

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