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The Iliad QUOTES

The Iliad QUOTES

1 " …There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad. "

― Homer , The Iliad

2 " 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 , The Iliad

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

― Homer , The Iliad

4 " 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 , The Iliad

5 " 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 , The Iliad

6 " 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— "

― Homer , The Iliad

7 " —so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs
and churning, whirling rims—and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms— "

― Homer , The Iliad

8 " Beauty! Terrible Beauty!
A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes! "

― Homer , The Iliad

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

― Homer , The Iliad

10 " You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face? "

― Homer , The Iliad

11 " Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.
Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on "

― Homer , The Iliad

12 " …and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief. "

― Homer , The Iliad

13 " 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! "

― Homer , The Iliad

14 " ...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance. "

― Homer , The Iliad

15 " 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. "

― Homer , The Iliad

16 " Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you to the field where men win fame. "

― Homer , The Iliad

17 " 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. "

― Homer , The Iliad

18 " Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. "

― Homer , The Iliad

19 " 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. "

― Homer , The Iliad

20 " Hector...boast while you may. The victory is yours, a gift from Zeus the Son of Cronos and Apollo. They conquered me...Listen to this and ponder it well. You too, I swear it, have not long to live. Already sovran Destiny and Death are very close to you, death at the hands of Achilles, the peerless son of Peleus "

― Homer , The Iliad