Quotes & Sayings About Life By Homer

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. — Homer

To alcohol! The cause of ... and solution to ... all of life's problems — Matt Groening

So, you met Steinbeck," mused Hemingway over his port after the women had left. "It is a fateful peculiarity that you might meet him and me at virtually the same time. To what do you attribute that, Homer?" "I don't know, sir," Homer answered. "Just the way it worked out, I guess." "Don't you believe it. There are no coincidences in life. Although the big God of the Hebrews might be the greatest of them, I believe there are small gods who watch out and sometimes determine our fate. I believe they also like to have a little fun with us from time to time. Kismet. You heard of it?" "I — Homer Hickam

You know, the one with all the well meaning rules that don't work out in real life, uh, Christianity. — Homer

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Hail, Columbia! Home of the six inch cockroach and the stadium-sized lecture hall. A reservation for rich white people guarded by poor brown people in a sea of urban decay. Where nobody on the faculty has ever spent ten minutes in the freshman dorm, but everybody talks about humanism and compassion. They teach you that military people are scum, trash, the lowest of the low
and then they assign Homer's ILIAD just to develop your sense of irony. Where else can you see three suicides a month dismissed as slightly above average, but better than Smith or Brown? — Ted Rall

The most interesting part of my life is of no concern to the public. — Winslow Homer

All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life. — Homer

Life is largely a matter of expectation. — Homer

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. "A native of America who cannot read or write," said John Adams, "is as rare an appearance ... as a Comet or an Earthquake. — Azar Nafisi

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

Bird life aplenty is found in the sunny air, not all of it significant. — Homer

Miserable mortals who like leaves at one moment flame with life eating the produce of the land and at another moment weakly perish. — Homer

One who contends with immortals lives a very short life. — Homer

I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim
was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,
in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-
not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,
in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies ...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. — Homer

In Life We Can Have Results or Reasons. — Harold Homer Anderson

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow. — Homer

Zeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment. — Homer

All men have need of the gods. — Homer

Change your meanings you alter your destiny. Life does not give us what we want. Life gives us whatever we expect. — Harold Homer Anderson

As we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with only Homer alone. — Thomas Jefferson

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. ========== — Anonymous

Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold;
Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold,
Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,
Can bribe the poor possession of the day. — Homer

So peaceful shalt thou end thy blissful days, And steal thyself from life by slow decays. — Homer

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

For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain,
And twins ev'n from the birth are Misery and Man! — Homer

I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad. — William Golding

Sing, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished - fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us. — Homer

I say no wealth is worth my life. — Homer

YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer. — Ambrose Bierce

Fr. 2
All We as Leaves
He (following Homer) compares man's life with the leaves.
All we as leaves in the shock of it:
spring-
one dull gold bounce and you're there.
You see the sun? - I built that.
As a lad. The Fates lashing their tails in a corner.
But (let me think) wasn't it a hotel in Chicago where I had the first of those - my body walking out of the room
bent on some deadly errand
and me up on the ceiling just sort of fading out-
brainsex paintings I used to call them?
In the days when I (so to speak) painted.
Remember
that oddly wonderful chocolate we got in East
(as it was then) Berlin? — Anne Carson

And for yourself, may the gods grant you your heart's desire, a husband and a home, and the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, when a man and woman live together with one hear and mind, bringing joy to their friends and grief to their foes. — Homer

Homer was wrong," wrote Heracleitus of Ephesus. "Homer was wrong in saying: 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away." These are the words on which the superhumanists should meditate. Aspiring toward a consistent perfection, they are aspiring toward annihilation. The Hindus had the wit to see and the courage to proclaim the fact; Nirvana, the goal of their striving, is nothingness. Wherever life exists, there also is inconsistency, division, strife. — Aldous Huxley

Every time you throw a snail off the dock," Ray teased Homer Wells, "you're making someone start his whole life over."

"Maybe I'm doing him a favor," said Homer Wells, the orphan. — John Irving

I know what you might be thinking here on your own, but those thoughts won't last for ever,' I said. 'You won't always feel like this. This will pass. Homer will be here for you, and the sun will rise and you'll find your reasons again. The ones you think have deserted you. Isn't that right, Meg? — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

A man's life breath cannot come back again
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth. — Homer

Wine was one of the first signs of civilization to appear in the life of human beings," he said. "It is in the Bible, it is in Homer, it shines through all the pages of history, participating in the destiny of ingenious men. It gives spirit to those who know how to taste it, but it punishes those who drink it without restraint. — Don Kladstrup

When will I learn? The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a
bottle. THEY'RE ON TV! — Homer

To quote Homer Simpson, alcohol is the cause and solution to all of life's problems. I don't think there's anything wrong with drinking and drug use, if people can do it and not hurt themselves. But it got to the point where I was really hurting myself. — Moby

Never! Never, Marge. I can't live the button-down life like you. I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the bluenoses with my cocky stride and musky odors -- oh, I'll never be the darling of the so-called 'City Fathers' who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about "What's to be done with this Homer Simpson? — Matt Groening

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," he recited from memory. — John Irving