Homér Quotes
page 2

Homer is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.The Homeric Question – concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that "Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" – ten Hellada pepaideuken. Wikipedia

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Homér: 217 quotes72 likes

Homér Quotes

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.”

Source: The Iliad

“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIV. 463–466 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Context: Tis sweet to play the fool in time and place,
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile,
The grave in merry measures frisk about,
And many a long-repented word bring out.

“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”

Source: The Iliad

“Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die.”

Source: Iliad

“The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.”

Source: The Iliad

“Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“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.”

Source: The Iliad

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

Source: The Iliad

“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.”

Source: The Iliad

“Aries in his many fits knows no favorites.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“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.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“down from his brow
she ran his curls
like thick hyacinth clusters
full of blooms”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.”

VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

“A small rock holds back a great wave.”

“I have no interest at all in food and drink, but only in slaughter and blood and the agonized groans of mangled men”

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“You wine sack, with a dog's eyes, with a deer's heart.”

I. 225 (tr. Richmond Lattimore); Achilles to Agamemnon.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“May you be turned every man of you into earth and water as you sit spiritless and inglorious in your places.”

VII. 99–100 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“He lacks the sense to see a day behind, a day ahead.”

I. 343 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Alike the idlers and the active die.”

IX. 320 (tr. Lord Derby).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“The day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear!”

IV. 164–165 (tr. Robert Fagles); spoken by Agamemnon.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Think not to match yourself against gods, for men that walk the earth cannot hold their own with the immortals.”

V. 440–442 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“But one can't go without his sleep forever.
The immortals give each thing its proper place
in our mortal lives throughout the good green earth.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIX. 592–594 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“Let us put our griefs to rest in our own hearts…
What good's to be won from tears that chill the spirit?
So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
live on to bear such torments—the gods live free of sorrows.”

XXIV. 522–526 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“As when in harp and song adept, a bard
Unlab'ring strains the chord to a new lyre.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XXI. 406–407 (tr. William Cowper).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“Prayers are Jove's daughters, of celestial race,
Lame are their feet, and wrinkled is their face;
With humble mien, and with dejected eyes,
Constant they follow where Injustice flies.”

IX. 498–500 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Oh but if Zeus's lightning blinded us those days,
it's Zeus who drives us, hurls us on today!”

XV. 724–725 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Bear up, old heart! You've borne worse, far worse…”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XX. 18 (tr. Robert Fagles).
: Bear up, my soul, a little longer yet;
A little longer to thy purpose cling!
Source: Odyssey (c. 725 BC), P. S. Worsley's translation:

“They remembered bed and took the gift of sleep.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XVI. 481 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“A physician is worth more than several other men put together, for he can cut out arrows and spread healing herbs.”

XI. 514–515 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“If any man obeys the gods, they listen to him also.”

I. 218 (tr. Richmond Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Ashamed to decline the challenge, yet fearing to accept it.”

VII. 93 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Let them be friends,
devoted as in the old days. Let peace and wealth
come cresting through the land.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XXIV. 485–486 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind.”

XXII. 262–263 (tr. Samuel Butler); Achilles to Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one without prudence
if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant
mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again
fade away and are dead.”

XXI. 462–466 (tr. R. Lattimore); Apollo to Poseidon.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“As stars in the night sky glittering
round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory
when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm…
all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts
the boundless, bright air and all the stars shine clear
and the shepherd's heart exults.”

VIII. 551–555 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
: As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Locking spear by spear, shield against shield at the base, so buckler
leaned on buckler, helmet on helmet, man against man.”

XIII, 130–131 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“And you, old sir, we are told you prospered once.”

XXIV. 543 (tr. R. Lattimore); Achilles to Priam.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“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.”

IX. 408–409 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Behold on wrong
Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong!
Dwells there a god on all the Olympian brow
More swift than Mars, and more than Vulcan slow?
Yet Vulcan conquers, and the god of arms
Must pay the penalty for lawless charms.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VIII. 329–331 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“Well then, what shall I go through first,
what shall I save for last?”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

IX. 14 (tr. Robert Fagles)
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“Both gods knotted the rope of strife and leveling war,
strangling both sides at once by stretching the mighty cable,
never broken, never slipped, that snapped the knees of thousands.”

XIII. 358–360 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Nothing more shameless is than Appetite,
Who still, whatever anguish load our breast,
Makes us remember in our own despite
Both food and drink.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VII. 216–218 (tr. P. S. Worsley).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“For a guest remembers all his days the hospitable man who showed him kindness.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XV. 54–55 (tr. G. H. Palmer).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“No man who fights with gods will live long or hear his children prattling about his knees when he returns from battle.”

V. 407–409 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Along the shore of the loud-roaring sea.”

I. 34.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Then give him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him,
of Sleep and Death, who are twin brothers, and these two shall lay him
down presently within the rich countryside of broad Lykia.”

XVI. 671–673 (tr. R. Lattimore). Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, VI.278.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.”

XXII. 345 (tr. R. Lattimore); Achilles to Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Not iron, trust me,
the heart within my breast. I am all compassion.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

V. 190–191 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“And uncontrollable laughter broke from the happy gods
as they watched the god of fire breathing hard
and bustling through the halls.”

I. 599–600 (tr. Robert Fagles); hence the expression "Homeric laughter".
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

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