Homer

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__ run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat__oward!

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

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 grief, and I should not sit in the house of somebody else with my lamentation and wailing. It is not good to go on mourning forever.

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

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

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

For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.

When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker.

The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.

Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.

Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear

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.

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 bring sorrow uponhim, he bears it as he needs must, and makes the best of it; forGod Almighty gives men their daily minds day by day. I know allabout it, for I was a rich man once, and did much wrong in thestubbornness of my pride, and in the confidence that my father andmy brothers would support me; therefore let a man fear God in allthings always, and take the good that heaven may see fit to sendhim without vainglory.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

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