The Odyssey Quotes
"The task of translating verse is not, it is true, merely mechanical, since it requires that the translator should catch from his author somewhat of the glow with which he wrote."
"I have found this a not unpleasing employment for a period of life which admonishes me that I cannot many times more appear before the public in this or any other manner."
"A great part of the fatigue which attends original composition, long pursued, is therefore avoided, and this gentler exercise of the intellectual faculties agrees better with that stage of life when the brain begins to be haunted by a presentiment that the time of its final repose is not far off."
"For my part, I am satisfied with the English language as it has been handed down to us."
"The differences between the two poems have been so well pointed out by critics, that I shall have occasion to speak of but two or three of them."
"How strange it is that mortals blame the gods and say that we inflict the ills they bear, when they, by their own folly and against the will of fate, bring sorrow on themselves!"
"Speak of Juno and Diana, and the mere English reader understands you at once; but when he reads the names of Herè and Artemis, he looks into his classical dictionary."
"Yet he who holds the earth in his embrace, Neptune, pursues him with perpetual hate because of Polypheme, the Cyclops, strong beyond all others of his giant race."
"In part thy mind will prompt thy speech; in part a god will put the words into thy mouth."
"No longer shouldst thou act as if thou wert a boy; thou hast outgrown the age of childish sports."
"The ever-blowing west-wind causes some to swell and some to ripen; pear succeeds to pear; to apple apple, grape to grape, fig ripens after fig."
"But when the climbing sun has reached the middle heaven, the Ancient of the Deep, who ne'er deceives, emerges from the waves."
"But when the bright-haired Eos had fulfilled the third day's course, and all the winds were laid, calm was on the watery waste."
"Ulysses, the great sufferer, prayed to the daughter of imperial Jove: 'O thou unconquerable child of Jove the Aegis-bearer! hearken to me now.'"
"There is no better, no more blessed state, than when the wife and husband in accord order their household lovingly."
"Nausicaä, daughter of the godlike chief Rhexenor! to thy husband I am come and to thy knees, from many hardships borne."
"So prayed he, supplicating. Pallas heard the prayer, but came not to him openly."
"So spake the king, and the great sufferer Ulysses heard with gladness, and preferred a prayer, and called on Jupiter."
"Rise, stranger, go to rest; thy bed is made."
"Alcinoüs laid him down in a recess within his lofty palace, near to whom the queen his consort graced the marriage-bed."
"No living man is nameless from the time that he is born."
"There is naught more delightful than the general joy of a whole people."
"In wars with heroes and on stormy seas, my limbs have lost their strength."
"The gods bestow not equally on all the gifts that men desire."
"No man who dwells in ships with many benches, a mere trader looking out for freight, can boast of skill in games."
"The gods decree destruction to the sons of men, a theme of song thereafter."
"A guest, a suppliant, is a brother, even to him who bears a heart not easy to be moved."
"Wise seems the stranger. Haste we to bestow gifts that may well beseem his liberal hests."
"There is no more delightful sight than when a whole people make merry."
"The gods are never pleased with violent deeds; they honor equity and justice."
"No hero on the dark-soiled continent nor in the isle of Ithaca possessed such wealth as he."
"The vagabond who comes to Ithaca goes straightway to my mistress with his lies."
"I loved ships well appointed, combats, polished spears and arrows."
"Such ever are thy thoughts, and therefore I must not forsake thee in thy need."
"We who serve may feed on them; it is the suitor train that banquet on the fatted swine."
"I shall not give thee that reward, for never will Ulysses come again to his own palace."
"My noble spirit never set the fear of death before me; I was ever first to spring upon the foes."
"The gods had given a generous growth like that of some young plant."
"As, smitten by the lash, four harnessed stallions spring on high and dart across the plain together."
"The gods who protect the suppliant, who beholds all men with equal eye, and punishes the guilty."
"The gods all hate my master, since they neither caused his death in the great war of Troy, nor, when the war was over, suffered him to die at home, and in the arms of those who loved him most."
"Why should a man like thee invent such tales, so purposeless?"
"Heard me, my friends: a dream has come from heaven into my sleep."
"Eat, venerable stranger, and enjoy what is before us. At his pleasure God gives or withholds; his power is over all."
"There is no man on earth, nor will there be, who shall lay violent hands upon Telemachus, thy son, while I am living."
"Would that Apollo, mighty with the bow, might smite thee also!"
"For let me tell thee, and do thou give heed, one who has suffered much and wandered far may take a pleasure even in his griefs."
"The sight of steel doth draw men on to violence."
"No being whom earth nourishes to breathe her air and move upon her face is more the sport of circumstance than man."
"Would that the chaste Diana by so soft a death might end me."
"Keep silence, and leave the issue with the gods."
"Short is the life of man, and whoso bears a cruel heart, devising cruel things, on him men call down evil from the gods."
"It cannot be that those should earn the general praise who make the wealth of a most worthy man their spoil."
"The bow belongs to men, and most to me; for here, within these walls, the authority is mine."
"The pleasure of the gods, and their own guilt, brought death on these; for no respect had they to any of their fellow-men."
"Let each one of us shall bring thee twenty beeves, and brass and gold, until thy heart shall be content."
"When another traveller whom I meet shall say it is a winnowing-fan I bear on my stout shoulder, there he bade me plant the oar upright in earth."
"Let us not go forth to draw down evil on our heads."
"As when a flock of broad-winged thrushes or wild pigeons strike a net within a thicket, as they seek their perch, and find unwelcome durance there."
"A cable of the barque of Byblos lay beneath the portico—it once had served a galley."
"How canst thou mock me thus, amidst my sorrows, with such idle tales?"
"He endured them all a while with patience, smitten and reviled in his own palace."
"This man, O friends, to his untamable arm will give no rest."