Odyssey Quotes

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

  Homer

  Inspirational, Brother, Teenager

  Homer (2012). “The Odyssey”, p.79, Courier Corporation

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each man delights in the work that suits him best.

  Homer

  Inspirational, Teenager, Men

  Homer (1996). “The Odyssey”, Viking Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Grieving, Winning, Men

  Homer (2008). “Odyssey, Homer”, Spark Publishing Group

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• For never, never, wicked man was wise.

  Homer

  Wise, Men, Wicked

  Homer (1872). “The Iliad ...”, p.326

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

  Thomas Moore

  Inspiring, Soul, Genuine

  Thomas Moore (1992). “Care of the soul: a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life”, Harpercollins

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• some things you will think of yourself,...some things God will put into your mind

  Homer

  Inspirational, Teenager, Thinking

  Homer (1937). “The story of Odysseus”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.

  Homer

  Pain, Way, Misery

  Homer (1997). “The Odyssey”, p.48, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

  Homer

  Deeds, Violence, Blades

  6 Copy quote

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

  Homer

  Moving, Men, Earth

  Homer (1937). “The Odyssey, the Story of Ulysses”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Movie, Doors, Great Year

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “2010: Odyssey Two”, p.227, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

  Homer

  Grief, Long, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• Take a stress pill and think things over-- HAL in 2001

  Stanley Kubrick

  Stress, Thinking, Pills

  9 Copy quote

• What do you think you're doing?

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Thinking, Lucky Charms, Psycho

  Ben Aaronovitch (2011). “Moon Over Soho: The Second PC Grant Mystery”, p.224, Hachette UK

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

  Roger Ebert

  Artist, Space, Essence

  Roger Ebert (2012). “33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity: Ebert's Essentials”, p.120, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Gilda Radner] was in the in vitro fertilization program, and it nearly, nearly drove us apart, too. She wanted that baby, so badly, and it didn't work. Oddly enough, when we were doing "Haunted Honeymoon" in London, she did become pregnant for about 10 days, but then she lost it. But, anyway, my odyssey with Gilda was wonderful, funny, torturous, painful and sad. It was - it went the full gamut.

  Gene Wilder

  Baby, London, Wonderful

  Source: keranews.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.

  Elie Wiesel

  Thinking, Historical, Elements

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Raymond Queneau

  Iliad, Seems

  4 Copy quote

• My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.

  Michael J. Massimino

  School, Space, Working Together

  6 Copy quote

• I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Baseball, Commitment, Views

  4 Copy quote

• It is amazing that 2001: A Space Odyssey has not aged at all, except for a few minor technical gadgets. The main reason is, of course, the philosophical or spiritual element in this story. We know as little today about the secrets of Creation and evolution as we knew before, and it is not likely that we'll ever know much more. We'll have to be satisfied, as Kubrick was, respectfully admiring the potential for evolution within the mystery of the universe's creation.

  Jan Harlan

  Spiritual, Philosophical, Space

  "EXCLUSIVE: Jan Harlan Creates Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures". Interview with Evan Jacobs, movieweb.com. October 24, 2007.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Impossible Things, Intellectual, Merit

  "The Immortal" (1968) (translation by James E. Irby)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poems are language turned into art; sound and sense matter; they can be as long or longer than The Odyssey or as short or shorter than a haiku. Not very helpful.

  Campbell McGrath

  Art, Long, Helpful

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had ambitions to set out and find, like an odyssey or going home somewhere, set out to find this home that I'd left a while back and couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I was on my way there. And encountering what I encountered on the way was how I envisioned it all. I didn't really have any ambition at all. I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so, I'm on my way home, you know?

  Bob Dylan

  Home, Ambition, Way

  "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan". Biography, Documentary, 2005.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Light, Sea, Sound

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume”, p.217

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction.

  Matthew Modine

  Photography, Art, Space

  7 Copy quote