Homer

In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!

— Homer

Reproach is infinite, and knows no end

— Homer

Too many kings can ruin an army

— Homer

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!

— Homer

It is not good to have a rule of many.

— Homer

Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.

— Homer

Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.

— Homer

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.

— Homer

And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.

— Homer

Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

— Homer

I am foremost of all the Trojan warriors to stave the day of bondage from off them; as for you, vultures shall devour you here.

— Homer

I say further, and lay my saying to your heart, you too shall live but for a little season; death and the day of your doom are close upon you, and they will lay you low by the hand of Achilles son of Aiakos.

— Homer

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

— Homer

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.

— Homer

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

— Homer

[I]t is the wine that leads me on,

— Homer

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

— Homer

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

— Homer

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

— Homer

For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.

— Homer