…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.
Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.
[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing… it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.
Reproach is infinite, and knows no endSo voluble a weapon is the tongue;Wounded, we wound; and neither side can failFor every man has equal strength to rail.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.
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.
Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.
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.
…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.
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!
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.
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—
There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
I would disapprove of another hospitable man who was excessive in friendship, as of one excessive in hate. In all things balance is better.
Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess– so she strikes our eyes!
Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.
No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.
Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?
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
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!
but sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away
For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother
For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.
Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.
…like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.
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.
Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear
Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.
The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.
When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker.
There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.
…an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself…
He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.
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.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
The business of wretches is wretched even in guarantee giving.
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.
‘Tis man’s to fight but Heaven’s to give success.
It is the bold man who every time does best at home or abroad.
Hateful to me as are the gates of hell Is he who hiding one thing in his heart Utters another.
There is satiety in all things in sleep and love-making in the loveliness of singing and the innocent dance.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
A sympathetic friend can be quite dear as a brother.
Yet verily these issues lie on the lap of the gods.
All strangers and beggars are from Zeus and a gift though small is precious.
‘Tis man’s to fight but Heaven’s to give success.
Who dares think one thing and another tell My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
A councillor ought not to sleep the whole night through – a man to whom the populace is entrusted and who has many responsibilities.
For that man is detested by me as the gates of hell whose outward words conceal his inmost thoughts.
His speech flowed from his tongue sweeter than honey.
Men grow tired of sleep love singing and dancing sooner than of war.
To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.
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.
Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.