33 Quotes About Odyssey

...μετὰ καὶ τόδε τοῖσι γενέσθω.

In Book VIII of the Odyssey we read that the gods weave misfortunes into the pattern of events to make a song for future generations to sing.----------Στην Όγδοη Ραψωδία της Οδύσσειας διαβάζουμε ότι οι θεοί κλώθουν τις συμφορές για να μη λείπουν από τις μελλούμενες γενιές θέματα για τραγούδια. (μτφ Δ. Καλοκύρης)

Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,turn as the days turn...as the father of men and gods make each day dawn.

I too seemed destined to be a man of fortune onceand a wild wicked swath I cut, indulged my lust for violence,stalking all on my father and my brothers.Look at me now,And so, I say, let no man ever be lawless all his life,just take in peace what gifts the gods will send.

The goddess did not shoot me in my home,aiming with gentle arrows. Nor did sickness suck all the strength out from my limbs, with longand cruel wasting. No, it was missing you, Odysseus, my sunshine; your sharp mind, and your kind heart. That took sweet life from me.— The Odyssey (11.198-203)

but sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting...a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all.

I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming.But it is not a story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile.

You’ll never be fainthearted or a fool,Telémakhos, if you have your father’s spirit;he finished what he cared to say,and what he took in hand he brought to pass.