Book 19 Quotes

• "Ha! Still here to plague us all night long, prowling around the house and ogling the women!"

  Melantho
• "Odysseus may come back. There's still a chance of that; and, if he's really dead and gone forever, he has a son by the grace of Apollo as good as himself; he's of an age when no bad behaviour in the palace of any of you women escapes his notice"


  Odysseus
• "There is not a man in the wide world who could find fault with you. For your fame has reached broad heaven itself, like that of some illustrious king."

  Odysseus
• "My loveliness of face and form and my pre-eminence the gods destroyed when the Argives embarked for Ilium and my husband Odysseus went with them."

  Penelope
• "Odysseus, whom people speak about as if he were a god"


  Odysseus
• "At accumulating wealth he (Odysseus) is unsurpassed; in fact not a man alive can rival him"


  Odysseus
• "This very month Odysseus will be here, between the waning of the old moon and the waxing of the new"


  Odysseus
• "When a man behaves kindly because his heart is kind, his reputation is spread far and wide by the guests he befriends, and he has no lack of people to sing his praises"

  Odysseus
• "Yet you (Odysseus) are the only one to whom Zeus has denied a home-coming"

  Eurycleia
• "I am indeed home after twenty years of grief and trouble. But, since a god has revealed it to you, keep your mouth shut and let not a soul in the house learn the truth"

  Odysseus
• "I'll keep as silent as a block of stone and iron"

  Eurycleia