Quotes & Sayings About Aeneas

By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we? — C.S. Lewis

I take courage," Aeneas said. "Here too there are tears for things, and hearts are touched by the fate of all that is mortal. — Edith Hamilton

A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman. — Tom Wolfe

Despairing Dido, queen of ancient Carthage, slain by her own hand as her magnificent lover Aeneas lifts anchor and sails away forever: this is one of the most haunting and permanent images of the classical world. — Thomas Cahill

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them. — Angela Carter

Hector had no virtue?" "Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one." "We all do," Aeneas remarked. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas? — Abraham Cowley

Duty bound, Aeneas, though he struggled with desire to calm and comfort her in all her pain, to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still with love if her, yet took the course heaven gave him and turned back to the fleet. — Virgil

The signs of the old flame, I know them well.
I pray that the earth gape deep enough to take me down
or the almighty Father blast me with one bolt to the shades,
the pale, glimmering shades in hell, the pit of night,
before I dishonor you, my conscience, break your laws. — Virgil

I recognize the vestiges of an old flame — Virgil

In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance. — Edward Hirsch

Up until relatively recently, creating original characters from scratch wasn't a major part of an author's job description. When Virgil wrote The Aeneid, he didn't invent Aeneas; Aeneas was a minor character in Homer's Odyssey whose unauthorized further adventures Virgil decided to chronicle. Shakespeare didn't invent Hamlet and King Lear; he plucked them from historical and literary sources. Writers weren't the originators of the stories they told; they were just the temporary curators of them. Real creation was something the gods did.
All that has changed. Today the way we think of creativity is dominated by Romantic notions of individual genius and originality, and late-capitalist concepts of intellectual property, under which artists are businesspeople whose creations are the commodities they have for sale. — Lev Grossman

It was the most beautiful moment that was so perfect you felt like you could just die. It was like the first time you ever heard Dido and Aeneas' "When I am laid in earth." A moment so pure you feel like you're dreaming and begin to question your own mortality that could be capable of and rival such innocent beauty. — Phil Volatile

Then answered her son, who turns the stars in the sky:
'What way art thou bending fate, Mother? What dost thou ask
For these thy ships? May vessels built by the hands
Of mortal men claim an immortal right?
Is Aeneas to pass, sure of the outcome, through dangers
When nothing is sure? To what god is such power allowed? — Virgil

So ran the speech. Burdened and sick at heart,
He feigned hope in his look, and inwardly
Contained his anguish. [ ... ]
Aeneas, more than any, secretly
Mourned for them all — Virgil

But the queen
too long she has suffered the pain of love,
hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,
consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [ ... ]
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none. — Virgil

There's a saying," Aeneas said: "Keep an eye on Greeks when they offer gifts." He spoke wryly. "Horses, particularly. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Aeneas comes to her court a suppliant, impoverished and momentarily timid. He is a good-looking man. If anything, his scars emphasize that. The aura of his divine failure wraps around him like a cloak. Dido feels the tender contempt of the strong for the unlucky, but this is mixed with something else, a hunger that worms through her bones and leaves them hollow, to be filled with fire. — Kij Johnson

in their supposed innocence of and opposition to empire, have become the mythic progenitors of the United States - almost as improbably as Solomon was of Ethiopia or Aeneas of Rome or his suppositious brother, Brut, of Britain. But almost everything most Americans think about the Plymouth colonists of 1620 is false. The truth is more credible. The first colonists in Massachusetts, exchanging accusations of "bestial, yea, diabolical affectations," were as divided and conflicted as people usually are when fate flings them together. Their leaders did not seek — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors. — Jonathan Swift

The dank night is sweeping down from the sky
and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep. — Virgil

Virgil put it with Roman bluntness and economy. Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat? cried Aeneas's comrade as they fought their way out of burning Troy disguised in Greek armor; which may be loosely translated: It won't matter to the enemy whether you beat him by guile or by valor. — Thaddeus Holt

Yet I feel like Theseus running madly through the coils of the labyrinth with horrors following at my heels and every twist bringing a new and dreaded sight. I dream and it pursues me I am sunk so far in horror heaped upon horror that I cannot taste wine or see the sun above. The world has ended and I don't know why I yet Live — Jo Graham

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas — Lucretius

Of this trinity of classic heroes - Ulysses, Aeneas, and Achilles - Ulysses is the least obnoxious. — William A. Quayle