Homer’s “The Iliad” Quotes (27 Quotes)

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.

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

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!

Nay if even in the house of Hades the dead forget their dead, yet will I even there be mindful of my dear comrade.

Antilochus! You're the most appalling driver in the world! Go to hell!

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.

But listen to me first and swear an oath to use all your eloquence and strength to look after me and protect me.

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.

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-

Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, which brought countless ills upon the Acheans.

Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding, tripods for the trading, and tawny headed stallions. But a mans's lifebreath cannot come back again- no raiders in force, no trading brings it back, once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.

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.

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable

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

Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.

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.

His descent was like nightfall.

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

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.

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!

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

You, you insolent brazen bitch-you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father's face?