Quotes from The Odyssey

Quotations follow the Robert Fagles translation (Penguin Classics, 1996) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.

2. 3

   Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost.

3. 4

   My name is Nobody: mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nobody.

4. 5

   Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending.

5. 6

   Nobody — that's my name.

6. 7

   Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.

7. 8

   I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.

8. 9

   When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared.

9. 10

   Nobody, friends — Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force!

10. 11

    Cyclops, if any man asks how you came by your blindness, say that Odysseus, sacker of cities, Laertes' son, a native of Ithaca, maimed you.

11. 12

    I am quite aware that my wife Penelope is nothing like so tall or so beautiful as yourself. She is only a woman, whereas you are an immortal. Nevertheless, I want to get home, and can think of nothing else.

12. 13

    So nothing is as sweet as a man's own country, his own parents, even though he's settled down in some luxurious house, off in a foreign land and far from those who bore him.

13. 14

    Come here, renowned Ulysses, honour to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices.

14. 15

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

15. 16

    Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth, our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.

16. 17

    See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.

17. 18

    She found him sitting upon the beach with his eyes ever filled with tears, and dying of sheer home-sickness.

18. 19

    For there is nothing better in this world than that man and wife should be of one mind in a house.

19. 20

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

20. 21

    There will be killing till the score is paid.

21. 22

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