#odyssey

But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’ I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead. ↗

— Homer

#the-odyssey #death

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. ↗

— Roman Payne

#homer #life #moon #nature #poetry

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

— Homer

#greek-gods #life-lessons #the-odyssey #life

In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree. (pg. 123, The Body and the Earth) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#earth #laertes #odysseus #odyssey #art

That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest. ↗

— Andrew Wiles

#now #odyssey #over #particular #rest

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts. ↗

— Wesley Morris

#beneath #course #doubts #friend #future

As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz's spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time. ↗

— Camille Paglia

#century #cultural #david #find #historians

We are on a difficult course, on a new Odyssey for Greece, but we know the road to Ithaca and have charted the waters. ↗

— Georgios A. Papandreou

#course #difficult #greece #know #new

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey. ↗

— Raymond Queneau

#consisted #either #fiction #general #having

It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey. ↗

— Raymond Queneau

#discovered #iliad #me #much #new