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.
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.
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.
The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.
Even the bravest cannot fight beyond his power.
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.
But listen to me first and swear an oath to use all your eloquence and strength to look after me and protect me.
His descent was like nightfall.
He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.
By hook or by crook this peril too shall be something that we remember.
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.
I say no wealth is worth my life.
Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable.
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.
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.
Reproach is infinite, and knows no end So voluble a weapon is the tongue; Wounded, we wound; and neither side can fail For every man has equal strength to rail.
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.
We men are wretched things.
I detest the man who hides on thing in the depths of his heart and speaks forth another.
This year I invested in pumpkins. They’ve been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they’re going to peak right around January. Then bang! That’s when I’ll cash in.