The Odyssey Quotes

“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.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.”
― Roman Payne

“They say Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’

I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
― The Odyssey

“Question me now about all other matters, but do not ask who I am, for fear you may increase in my heart it's burden of sorrow as I think back; I am very full of grief, and I should not sit in the house of somebody else with my lamentation and wailing. It is not good to go on mourning forever.”
― Homer The Odyssey Book 19 115120

“When night falls and the world lies lost in sleep,
I take to my bed, my heart throbbing, about to break,
anxieties swarming, piercing—I may go mad with grief.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.”
― Homer

“Alexander the Great slept with
'The Iliad' beneath his pillow.
Though I’ve never led an army,
I am a wanderer. I cradle
'The Odyssey' nights while the
moon is waning, as if it were
the sweet body of a woman.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Upon my word, just see how mortal men always put the blame on us gods! We are the source of evil, so they say - when they have only their own madness to think if their miseries are worse than they ought to be.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Must you have battle in your heart forever? The bloody toil of combat? Old contender, will you not yield to the immortal gods? That nightmare cannot die, being eternal evil itself – horror, and pain, and chaos; there is no fighting her, no power can fight her. All that avails is flight.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveller, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I was adrift on the high seas, but my course was becoming clear. It lay between the scylla of my peers and the swirling, sucking charybdis of my family. Veering toward scylla seemed much the safer route, and after navigating the passage, I soon washed up, a bit stunned, on a new shore. Like Odysseus on the island of the cyclops, I found myself facing a "being of colossal strength and ferocity, to whom the law of man and god meant nothing." In true heroic fashion, I moved toward the thing I feared. Yet while Odysseus schemed desperately to escape Polyphemus's cave, I found that I was quite content to stay here forever.”
― Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

“Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, (...) holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“She mustn't mar her lovely face with tears”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“All right then. Here's my story. Even though
it plunges me into deeper grief than I feel now.
But that's the way of the world, when one has been
so far from home, so long away as I, roving over
many cities of men, enduring many hardships.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Living with him was like standing beside the sea. Each day a different colour, a different foam-capped height, but always the same restless intensity pulling towards the horizon.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.”
― Louise Glück, Meadowlands

“But death is a thing that comes to all alike. Not even
the gods can fend it away from a man they love, when once
the destructive doom of leveling death has fastened upon him.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Light as the viewless air the warrior maid Glides through the valves, and hovers round her head; A favourite virgin’s blooming form she took, From Dymas sprung, and thus the vision spoke: “Oh Indolent! to waste thy hours away!”
― Homer, Homers Odysseen

“But I'll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes”
― Homer

“One speech in't I chiefly loved.
T'was Aeneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
If it live in your memory, begin at this line”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“So it is that the gods do not bestow graces in all ways
on men, neither in stature nor yet in brains or eloquence;
for there is a certain kind of man, less noted for beauty,
but the god puts comeliness on his words, and they who look toward him are filled with joy at the sight, and he speaks to them without faltering
in winning modesty, and shines among those who are gathered,
and people look on him as on a god when he walks in the city.
Another again in his appearance is like the immortals,
but upon his words there is no grace distilled, as in your case the appearance is conspicuous, and not a god even
would make it otherwise, and yet the mind there is worthless.”
― Homer, The Odyssey of Homer / translated by George Herbert Palmer. 1892 [Leather Bound]

“Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame upon us
gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather,
who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given”
― Homer, Homer's Odyssey

“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“There! I would think. In the bin! Where the bad things go! I like bins very much generally.”
― Lara Willaims

“There! I would think. In the bin! Where the bad things go! I liked bins very much generally.”
― Lara Williams

“I've never read the feminist version of The Odyssey, but I imagine it goes something like this:

"Odysseus was a man. A complicated man. (Did I mention he was a prick and a fucker with a revolting rapist penis too? Well, he was and he did have one.)

Odysseus was at the apex of an oppressive Greek patriarchy, perhaps the OG patriarchy. He had "men" under his command. I suppose you're wondering what these "men" were like? (Hint: see above.)

(N.B. If I have accidentally written anything remotely complimentary or positive about men, please contact my publisher and I will retract it in future editions.)

Being toxically masculine, Odysseus abandoned his wife Penelope and their son and disappeared for twenty years for island hook-ups with nymphs and to commit ableist, homicidal thuggery against one-eyed, cave-dwelling primitives. Meanwhile, Penelope, the real hero of this epic — afflicted by her internalised misogyny — defended the oppressive marriage through the menial, degrading task of weaving, while resisting the 108 potential rapists who had moved into his home and wanted her sexually non-stop.”
― Stewart Stafford

“You've probably heard that my father ran after our departing chariot, begging me to stay with him, and that Odysseus asked me if I was going to Ithaca with him of my own free will, or did I prefer to remain with my father?

It's said that in answer I pulled down my veil, being too modest to proclaim in words my desire for my husband, and that a statue was later erected of me in tribute to the virtue of modesty.

There's some truth to this story. But I pulled down my veil to hide the fact that I was laughing. You have to admit there was something humorous about a father who'd once tossed his own child into the sea, capering down the road after that very child and calling, 'Stay with me!' I didn't feel like staying.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“What you most want, is what you most can't have. And what you most can't have, is what you already had, and lost.”
― Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey