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The whole was worked and engraved in the manner of the time, when art made the basest metals precious.... There was no sense now in staying on Monte Cristo like a dragon guarding a useless treasure: he must return to life and take his place among men and in society, with the rank, influence and power that are bestowed in this world by wealth—that first and greatest of forces that a human being can control.

Not altogether a fool, but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.

The eye—it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where’er they be,
Against or with our will

It was now that Athene said to Zeus: 'Father of ours, Son of Cronos, King of Kings, answer my question and say what thoughts are hidden in your heart. Will you further this strife with its horrors and turmoil or establish peace between the two sides?'

To this Zeus the Cloud-gatherer replied: 'My child, why come to me with such questions? Was it not your own idea that Odysseus should return and avenge himself?'

The Feud is Ended

Odysseus and Penelope

Frink se preguntó quiénes estarían consultando también el oráculo en aquella vasta y complicada ciudad. Recibirían todos un consejo tan sombrío? Era el tenor del Momento igualmente adverso para ellos?

The Battle in the Hall

Whoever strings the bow most easily and shoots an arrow through every one of these twelve axes, with that man I will go, bidding goodbye to this house which welcomed me as a bride, this lovely house so full of all good things, this home that even in my dreams I shall never forget.

But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging.

An appetite; a feeling and a love, / That had no need of a remoter charm / By thought supplied.” Poetry exists for the sake of a recollection of feeling, and feeling is valued for its impression of sheer contact with life…. . He is loved for a sense of radical sufficiency in the fact that life is—the faith of many people who espouse a religion without a name.

to explain the poet’s belief that by descending to the common he has touched the sublime.

The Great Bow

Prelude to the Crisis

So now that you have me in your house, ask me any other questions, but do not inquire about my ancestry and my country, or you will bring fresh sorrow to my heart by making me recall the past. For I am a man of many sorrows.

Eurycleia Recognizes Odysseus

The Beggar in the Palace

It is a sacrilege for someone who has received mercy to plot against someone in need of mercy.

Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.

Telemachus Returns