And empty words are evil.

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

A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.

If you are one of earth’s inhabitants, how blest your father, and your gentle mother, blest all your kin. I know what happiness must send the warm tears to their eyes, each time they see...

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.

Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time of Homer, where there were gods of the sky and the Earth, the...

Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger....

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the...

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

Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in...

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

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which...

Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the...

Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one...

Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you to the field...

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

…like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live,...

Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till...

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

Man is the vainest of allcreatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heavenvouchsafes him health and strength, he thinks that he shall come tono harm hereafter, and even when the blessed gods...

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.

He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.

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

[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing… it eventempts him to blurt...

Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added...

There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.

Not like Homer would I write,Not like Dante if I might,Not like Shakespeare at his best,Not like Goethe or the rest,Like myself, however small,Like myself, or not at all.

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

Reproach is infinite, and knows no endSo voluble a weapon is the tongue;Wounded, we wound; and neither side can failFor every man has equal strength to rail.

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

Im Frieden begraben die Söhne ihre Väter, im Krieg begraben Väter ihre Söhne.

…[T]he three greatest works are those of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare.These are closely followed by the works of Virgil and Milton.

Too many kings can ruin an army

…an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself…

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 sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.

For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.

For double are the portals of flickering dreams.One set is made of horn, the other of ivory.And as for those that come through the sawn ivory,They deceive, carrying words that will not be fulfilled;But those...

First she said we were to keep clear of the Sirens, who sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers; but she said I might hear them myself so long as no one...

And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!

Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you –...

Question me now about all other matters, but do not ask who I am, for fear you may increase in my heart it’s burden of sorrow as I think back; I am very full of...

Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess– so she strikes our eyes!

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong...