Quotes

Printable Version (opens in new window).

by Homer

Winged words
—The Illiad

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who
hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
—The Illiad

It lies in the lap of the gods.
—The Illiad

Whoever obeys the gods, to him they particularly listen.
—The Illiad

The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside.
—The Illiad

Young men's minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks before and after.
—The Illiad

There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men.
—The Illiad

All men have need of the gods.
—The Odyssey

We are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth.
—The Odyssey

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.
—The Odyssey

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.
—The Odyssey

about Homer

Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from the world, and you will probably take away its glory.—Rancois René de Chateaubriand

Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.
—John Sheffield, Duke of Buckngham and Normandy

Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and a reproach among men.—Xenophanes

In The Odyssey one may liken Homer to the setting sun, of which the gandeur remains without the intensity.—Longinus

Homer is new and fresh this morning, and nothing, perhaps, is as old and tired as today's newspaper.—Charles Péguy

Sources for Quotations

I use various sources for quotations on this site. Below are the most common sources I use. I also draw from my own collection of quotes and from primary sources.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition. John Bartlett, Justin Kaplan, editors. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1992.

BrainyQuote. <http://www.brainyquote.com/>

The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation. Richard Kenin and Justin Wintle, editors. Dorset Press, New York, 1978

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, fourth edition. Angela Partington, editor. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 1992

Peter's Quotations by Laurence J. Peter. Bantam Books, New York, 1980

The Quotations Page. <http://www.quotationspage.com/>