Homer (800 BC-700 BC)

Quotes

• A small rock holds back a great wave.

• May the gods grant you all things which your heart desires, and may they give you a husband and a home and gracious concord, for there is nothing greater and better than this -when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and joy to their friends, and win high renown.

• All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious.

• We are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth.

• So it is that the gods do not give all men gifts of grace - neither good looks nor intelligence nor eloquence.

• Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.

• Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

• There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

• There is nothing more dread and more shameless than a woman who plans such deeds in her heart as the foul deed which she plotted when she contrived her husband's murder.

• I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

• It is tedious to tell again tales already plainly told.

• The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

• It is equally wrong to speed a guest who does not want to go, and to keep one back who is eager. You ought to make welcome the present guest, and send forth the one who wishes to go.

• Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

• Wide-sounding Zeus takes away half a man's worth on the day when slavery comes upon him.

• The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men.

• Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.

• Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.

• The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.

• I detest that man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks for another.