Homer

Even a fool learns something once it hits him.

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.

The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!

There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.

Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death.

My name is Nobody.

For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain, And twins ev'n from the birth are Misery and Man!

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.

Two diverse gates there are of bodiless dreams, These of sawn ivory, and those of horn. Such dreams as issue where the ivory gleams Fly without fate, and turn our hopes to scorn. But dreams which issue through the burnished horn, What man soe'er beholds them on his bed, These work with virtue and of truth are born.

It is not right to exult over slain men.

Zeus it seems has given us from youth to old age a nice ball of wool to wind-nothing but wars upon wars until we shall perish every one.

Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

We men are wretched things, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives...Zeus the Thunderer has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, in which he keeps his gifts, the evils in one and the blessings in the other.

Strange to behold, what blame these mortals can bring against godhead! For their ills, they assert, are from us, when they themselves by their mad recklessness have pain far past what is fated.

Necessity demands our daily bread; Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

And nature is of mortals once deceased. For they nor muscle have, nor flesh, nor bone; All those (the spirit from the body once. Divorced) the violence of fire consumes, And, like a dream, the soul flies swift away.

No man who fights with gods will live long or hear his children prattling about his knees when he returns from battle.