Best Epic Poem Quotes & Sayings

For the scientist the analytical process does not diminish the splendour of what he or she sees. Every detail added is an extra stanza added to a great epic poem, one that is never complete, nor yet ever tedious in its particulars — Richard Fortey

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now. — Julie Taymor

Lucifer unbound his absolution
His purpose took unstoppable form
A wyrm whose brilliance blinded
Tenacity burned as radiant as the Almighty
Lucifer remembered this so vividly
A fond memory of when God stood thunderstruck — D.J. LeMarr

Fine, but you should at least have to write an epic poem in my honor. Here, I'll help you. "Ode to Keefe Sencen, that brave lovable nut. He may not have teal eyes, but he has a really cute,"
"KEEFE"! — Shannon Messenger

My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said. — Laurie Anderson

His tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions. — Jules Verne

This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this. — Dervla Murphy

Kethry had once described summoning as being like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs. — Mercedes Lackey

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

Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision. Authors like Chaucer and Langland use this form, in which the narrator describes another world - usually a heavenly paradise - which is compared with the earthly human world. In Pearl, the narrator sees his daughter who died in infancy, 'the ground of all my bliss'. She now has a kind of perfect knowledge, which her father can never comprehend. The whole poem underlines the divide between human comprehension and perfection; these lines show the gap between possible perfection and fallen humanity which, thematically, anticipate many literary examinations of man's fall, the most well known being Milton's late Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost. — Ronald Carter

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. — Lascelles Abercrombie

After listing the vast array of famous composers, artists, and authors who had created works based on Dante's epic poem, Langdon scanned the crowd. "So tell me, do we have any authors here tonight?" Nearly one-third of the hands went up. Langdon stared out in shock. Wow, either this is the most accomplished audience on earth, or this e-publishing thing is really taking off. — Dan Brown

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. — Douglas Adams

They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell. — John Milton

Bad tactics, and whoever this Caladan Brood is, he's shown himself adept at making us pay for our mistakes." "Caladan Brood," Calot murmured. "I swear I've heard that name somewhere before. Odd that I've never given it much thought." Tattersail's eyes narrowed on Tayschrenn. Calot was right: the name of the man commanding the Tiste Andii alongside the Crimson Guard did sound familiar - but in an old way, echoing ancient legends, perhaps, or some epic poem. — Steven Erikson

I could write an epic poem about your thighs."
"That would amuse polite society rather too much, and I wouldn't like that."
"I wouldn't either." She pressed her cheek to his belly. "I can't think of a word to rhyme with marble column. — Christina Dodd

The Psalter forms the great epic poem of the creator and covenant God who will at the last visit and redeem his people and, with them, his whole creation. — N. T. Wright

My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed into new bodies: O gods above, inspire this undertaking (which you've changed as well) and guide my poem in its epic sweep from the world's beginning to the present day. The — Ovid

An epic without a focus - without a single action, a coherent plot, a single terrible point to make - was just a very long poem. — Daniel Mendelsohn

Oh God," Coyote said, and rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one hand. "It's hard to remember something that long ago. It's almost like an epic poem I memorized once, and can barely recite anymore. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue. — Roger Ebert

Every given commodity fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. The spectacle, then is the epic poem of this struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sign the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle every commodity, pursuing its passion, unconsciously realizes something higher: the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity logic, what's specific in the commodity wears itself out in the fight while the commodity-form moves toward its absolute realization. — Guy Debord

To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. — Victor Hugo

Heroic poetry tends in its simplest form to be concerned with immediate events and local heroes. A certain length of tradition is required before the epic poem, telling the story of the hero, becomes current. Heroic poetry assumes that the audience knew what the outcome of the battle was, and is concerned with individual feats; the context is of little importance. Epic poems only become attractive as a form when the audience needs to be told who the heroes were. — Richard Barber

But nothing of all that the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem to have appeared among them. Perhaps they will rediscover that epic genius when they learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire might, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers. It is doubtful if this will happen soon. — Simone Weil

In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts; the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem. — William Shenstone

Nature is a book of many pages and each page tells a fascinating story to him who learns her language. Our fertile valleys and craggy mountains recite an epic poem of geologic conflicts. The starry sky reveal gigantic suns and space and time without end. — A. E. Douglass

One of the things that was really influential early on was Ezra Pound's Cantos, one poem he worked on for 50 years. It's epic. I had a great deal of difficulty understanding it. One of the problems was you'd be reading along in English and he would move to a Chinese ideogram or French-he actually used seven different languages in a given poem. And for somebody who's not fluent in different languages it has the impact of rupturing your way of understanding something. — Richard Misrach

No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, "Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere ... " And yet he was accused of treason - betraying his country - the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct? — Bill O'Reilly

A Concordance of Leaves is an epic poem of the indomitable yet fragile human spirit. Philip Metres brings Palestine and Palestinians into English with rare luminosity. One feels echoes of Oppen's succinct tenderness in the depiction of the numerous characters of this work. Without other, there is no self. And that other is the stranger who must be loved. Concordance is, after all, a wedding poem-leaves and pages in search of a certain passage toward harmony. — Fady Joudah

I had begun to perceive my genitals as imaginary beasts in some epic fourteenth-century Scottish poem. — Steve Toltz

This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy, a great epic poem, Britain, a thick novel, America, a brash motion picture in technicolor ... — Jess Walter