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”

“Strife and Confusion joined the fight, along with cruel Death, who seized one wounded man while still alive and then another man without a wound, while pulling the feet of one more corpse out from the fight. The clothes Death wore around her shoulders were dyed red with human blood.”

“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.”

“Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.”

“I say no wealth is worth my life.”

“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”

“Reproach is infinite, and knows no endSo voluble a weapon is the tongue;Wounded, we wound; and neither side can failFor every man has equal strength to rail.”

“Life is largely a matter of expectation. ”

“...for iron of itself draws a manthereto.”

“Limping, attendants rushed up to support him, Attendants made of gold who looked like real girls, With a mind within, and a voice, and strength, And knowledge of crafts from the immortal gods. These busily moved to support their lord...”

“so evenly was strained their war and battle,till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son ofPriam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In apiercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-tamingTrojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierceblazing fire."So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears,and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spearsin their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. AndHector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thickin the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two bestmen of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from theground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son ofcrooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherdlightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and littledoth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straightagainst the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, doublegates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one boltfastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly plantedhimself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, thathis cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and thestone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loudaround, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and thatbeneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with facelike the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about hisbody, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could haveheld him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods,and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to theTrojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedilysome overleaped the wall, and some poured into the fair-wroughtgateways, and the Danaans fled in fear among the hollow ships, and aceaseless clamour arose.”

“Now from his breast into the eyes the acheof longing mounted, and he wept at last,his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmerspent in rough water where his ship went downunder Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.Few men can keep alive through a big serfto crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beachesin joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”

“Choose well.”

“As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.”

“Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!”

“And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.”

“And for yourself, may the gods grant you your heart's desire, a husband and a home, and the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, when a man and woman live together with one hear and mind, bringing joy to their friends and grief to their foes.”

“Mistress; please: are you divine, or mortal?”

“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.”

“A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.”

“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.”

“You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?”

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”

“Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.”

“And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!”

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

“…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.”

“You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!”

“Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.”

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”

“But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—”

“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.”

“They did not know her-gods are hard for mortals to recognize.”

“[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.”

“down from his browshe ran his curlslike thick hyacinth clustersfull of blooms”

“Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.”

“I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claimwas 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.”

“He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.”

“And so their spirits soaredas they took positions own the passageways of battleall night long, and the watchfires blazed among them.Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glitteringround the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glorywhen the air falls to a sudden, windless calm...all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffsand the steep ravines and down from the high heavens burststhe boundless bright air and all the stars shine clearand the shepherd's heart exults - so many fires burnedbetween the ships and the Xanthus' whirling rapidsset by the men of Troy, bright against their walls.A thousand fires were burning there on the plainand beside each fire sat fifty fighting menpoised in the leaping blaze, and champing oatsand glistening barley, stationed by their chariots,stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne.”

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

“A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.”

“some things you will think of yourself,...some things God will put into your mind”

“Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?”

“I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another”

“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.”

“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.”

“Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen? Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart”

“My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius”

“I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.”