Many are the birds who under the sun’s rays wander the sky; not all of them mean anything.
The business of wretches is wretched even in guarantee giving.
My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another.
Oh, mother! since thy son To early death by destiny is doom’d, I might have hop’d the Thunderer on high, Olympian Jove, with honour would have crown’d My little space; but now disgrace is mine; Since Agamemnon, the wide-ruling King, Hath wrested from me, and still holds, my prize.” Weeping, he spoke; his Goddess-mother heard, Beside her aged father where she sat In the deep ocean-caves: ascending quick Through the dark waves, like to a misty cloud, Beside her son she stood; and as he wept, She.
What I say will be a bit of boasting. The mad wine tells me to do it. Wine sets even a thoughtful man to singing, or sets him into softly laughing, sets him to dancing. Sometimes it tosses out a word that was better unspoken.
Odysseus is a migrant, but he is also a political and military leader, a strategist, a poet, a loving husband and father, an adulterer, a homeless person, an athlete, a disabled cripple, a soldier with a traumatic past, a pirate, thief and liar, a fugitive, a colonial invader, a home owner, a sailor, a construction worker, a mass murderer, and a war hero.
I would disapprove of another hospitable man who was excessive in friendship, as of one excessive in hate. In all things balance is better.
Impressive displays of rhetoric and linguistic force are a good way to seem important and invite a particular kind of admiration, but they tend to silence dissent and discourage deeper modes of engagement.
I respect and reverence you, dear father-in-law, I wish I had chosen death rather than following your son, leaving behind my bridal chamber, my beloved daughter, my dear childhood friends and my kin. But I did not, and I pine away in sorrow.
Sleep is sweet, whomever it seizes, though he has cares.
Both were gods of the same line, a single father, but Zeus was the elder-born and Zeus knew more.
Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.
And so the Trojans buried Hector, breaker of horses.
We who are gods forever have to endure the most horrible hurts, by each other’s hatred, as we try to give favor to mortals.
Trojans and Achaians, who like wolves sprang upon one another, with man against man in the onfall.
Aphrodite forever stands by her man and drives the spirits of death away from him.
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master.
There is no thought of death in your mind now, and yet death stands close beside you as you put on the immortal armor of a surpassing man.
Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness; a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered with tears, and the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars. All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.
Now Odysseus was sitting close to the fire, but suddenly turned to the dark side; 390 for presently he thought in his heart that, as she handled him, she might be aware of his scar, and all his story might come out. She came up close and washed her lord, and at once she recognized that scar, which once the boar with his white tusk had inflicted on him, when he went to Parnassos, to.