Quotes on Iliad

Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.

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.

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.

No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.

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.

Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.

A councilor ought not to sleep the whole night through, a man to whom the populace is entrusted, and who has many responsibilities.

Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.

I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.

Miserable mortals who like leaves at one moment flame with life eating the produce of the land and at another moment weakly perish.

Better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches.

And overpowered by memory Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself, Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

Even a fool learns something once it hits him.