Beowulf Boasting Quotes

Beloved Beowulf, remember how you boasted, Once, that nothing in the world would ever Destroy your fame; fight to keep it, Now, be strong and brave, my noble King, protecting life and fame Together. My sword will fight at your side!

BEOWULF’s comeback is savage lol: “Now I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth, that bears comparison. I don’t boast when I say that neither you nor Breca were ever much celebrated for swordsmanship or for facing danger on the field of battle.

Beowulf spake then, Boast-words uttered—the latest occasion: He boasts of his youthful prowess, and declares himself still fearless. “I braved in my youth-days battles unnumbered; Still am I willing the struggle to look for, Fame-deeds perform, folk-warden prudent, If the hateful despoiler forth from his cavern Seeketh me out!

Like those records, and whilst likewise showing a most interesting historical knowledge of certain events and personages that also appear in the Genesis record, the Beowulf poem clearly pre-dates any knowledge among the Anglo-Saxons of Christianity. In view of this, it is hardly surprising to find that the sentiments of the poem are strongly pagan, extolling the highly questionable virtues of vengeance, the accumulation of plunder and the boasting of and reliance upon human strength and prowess. Allusions are also made to blatantly pagan oaths, sacrifices, sentiments and forms of burial. But there are certainly no exclusively Christian sentiments expressed anywhere in its 3182 lines of text.

With my beloved sword I ministered to them, as it was meet. In no wise had they joy in that banqueting, foul doers of ill deeds, that they should devour me sitting round in feast nigh to the bottoms of the sea; nay, upon the morrow they lay upon the shore in the flotsam of the waves, wounded with sword-thrusts, blades done to death, so that never there-after might they about the steep straights molest the passage of seafaring men.