Odyssey Quotes

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

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

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

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

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.

Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction.

A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time

Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

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

Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence. [Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]

I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.

Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.

Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death

The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, The Odyssey because all life is a journey, The Book of Job because all life is a riddle.

My name is Nobody.

The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.

The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

لقد قرأت بعض الكتب فقط للتقليل من جهلي !

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.

And empty words are evil.

Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?

[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs, laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing... it even tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.

Each man delights in the work that suits him best.

Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.

There will be killing till the score is paid.

some things you will think of yourself,...some things God will put into your mind

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.

Why be a half-finished poem in some forgotten poet’s story, when one can be an odyssey in and of herself, part magic, part villain, part Goddess, part lover.

If we are out of step with the priorities of real life and feel lost in the anarchy of our feelings, we must assert our humbleness and assume we need the shine of a guiding lighthouse in our emotional odyssey. ("Camera obscura of the mind")

She enjoys rain for its wetness, winter for its cold, summer for its heat. She loves rainbows as much for fading as for their brilliance. It is easy for her, she opens her heart and accepts everything.

If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer.

After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.

The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God!—it’s full of stars!

I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actor, kidding ourselves on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

out of sight,out of mind

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end

Why cover the same ground again? ... It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly.

All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

Immortals are never alien to one another.

The future happens. No matter how much we scream.

They say Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.

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 to the tale of those.

Some people seek meaning in life through personal gain, through personal relationship, or through personal experiences. However, it seems to me that being blessed with the intellect to divine the ultimate secrets of nature gives meaning enough to life.

Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

When we interpret and transform external events into internal experiences, we can navigate our emotional odyssey, reconstruct our sense of self, and integrate the past into a coherent narrative, making sense of the present and preparing for the future. ("Camera obscura of the mind")

My philosophy when it came to pets was much like that of having children: You got what you got, and you loved them unconditionally regardless of whatever their personalities or flaws turned out to be.

أنا الذي أشكك بكل شيء ، كيف لا أشكك كذلك بشكوكي ؟

حين يصبح الإيمان حقوداً ، بورك الذين يشككون !

Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

There was no private ownership of land. "You could own a knife, or you could own a horse, but you couldn't own ground any more than you could own the sun or the wind. The Earth was their mother and part of the Cosmos given to all creatures by the Great Spirit.

down from his brow she ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters full of blooms

Aries in his many fits knows no favorites.

After experiencing a past life as a Native American, I remembered what the Indians believed.

. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you're going is as good as where you've been.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

When first I arrived in the woods, I became aware of how unprepared I was for what I was about to experience." 

The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.

. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.

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 each other.

If he was indeed mad, his delusions were beautifully organized.

By hook or by crook this peril too shall be something that we remember

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

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

Humor was the enemy of desire.

Throughout our emotional odyssey in the unembellished narrative of our life, we may sense many alluring voices that are enticing us into a beguiling, seamless story. Our inner monologue, however, might start raising consequential questions about the scintillation of that story, about our vulnerability during the tempting process and the danger of losing our real self. The question may be asked, whether the lure might enlighten, weaken or destroy our living. While our interior monologue mostly listens to the wisdom of our experience and the guidance of our memory, it may happen that it prefers not to listen. In that event, however, unreason and passion will be calling all the shots. ( “Woman in progress” )

The night is dark, the lamps are all off, and the moon is new. But my inner eye sees the path. I follow my feet, and my feet follow my soul.

Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.

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

Now from his breast into the eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big serf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη: καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης. - Be patient, my heart: for you have endured things worse than this before.

ما جدوى السفر حول العالم لرؤية ما يكمن أصلا في قرارة النفس ؟

What are men? Children who doubt.

Say not a word in death's favor; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead." -Achilles

I am evolving from being an animal,' he said. 'But it is going very, very slowly. Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything. Yet tears don't come. Laughter doesn't come.

There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.

The revelation that I’m destined to meet many virgins from the East and the promise of limitless love they hold in their bosoms gives me strength, fortitude, and tenacity—and the wisdom to know that all three are synonyms.

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star. But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven--or hell. How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars. Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality. Increasing numbers, however are asking; 'Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?' Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

When a trapper entered the valley, I reflected back on my life as an Indian. "I'm sure as an Indian living  on the plains, I trapped animals for their fur and for their meat, I took what I needed for survival, but doing it for profit somehow rubbed me the wrong way

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.

[B]ut it is only what happens, when they die, to all mortals. The sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, and once the spirit has let the white bones, all the rest of the body is made subject to the fire's strong fury, but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.

I'm sure I must have sounded like a fool and a borderline psychotic most of that year, when I talked to people who thought they knew who and where they were at the time ... but looking back, I see that if I wasn't Right, at least I wasn't Wrong, and in that context I was forced to learn from my confusion ... which took awhile, and there's still no proof that what I finally learned was Right, but there's not a hell of a lot of evidence to show that I'm Wrong either.

So, the gods don't hand out all their gifts at once, not build and brains and flowing speech to all. One man may fail to impress us with his looks but a god can crown his words with beauty, charm, and men look on with delight when he speaks out. Never faltering, filled with winning self-control, he shines forth at assembly grounds and people gaze at him like a god when he walks through the streets. Another man may look like a deathless one on high but there's not a bit of grace to crown his words. Just like you, my fine, handsome friend.

These nights are endless, and a man can sleep through them, or he can enjoy listening to stories, and you have no need to go to bed before it is time. Too much sleep is only a bore. And of the others, any one whose heart and spirit urge him can go outside and sleep, and then, when the dawn shows, breakfast first, then go out to tend the swine of our master. But we two, sitting here in the shelter, eating and drinking, shall entertain each other remembering and retelling our sad sorrows. For afterwards a man who has suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.

We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road.

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he onced dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.