Homer

The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men.

Attach a golden chain from heaven, and all of you take hold of it, you gods and goddesses, yet would you not be able to drag Zeus the most high from heaven to earth.

The God of War will see fair play-he's often slain that wants to slay!

The rule of the many is not well. One must be chief. In war and one the king.

For young men's spirits are too quickly stirr'd.

Therein are love, and desire, and loving converse, that steals the wits even of the wise.

Death is the worst; a fate which all must try; And for our country 'tis a bliss to die.

The journey is its own reward.

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, that ruinous wrath which brought the Achaeans countless woes, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls.

Then welcome fate! 'Tis true I perish, yet I perish great: Yet in a mighty deed I shall expire, Let future ages hear it, and admire!

Very like leaves upon this earth are the generations of men -- old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves the greening forest bears when spring comes in. So mortals pass; one generation flowers even as another dies away.

Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out and through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall.

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.

We men are wretched things.

Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it's born with us the day that we are born.

Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.

Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honor, the brave with the weaklings. A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.

The god of war is impartial: he hands out death to the man who hands out death.

Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth, our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man. So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees, he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years. But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times, bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.