Aeneas Quotes

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them. ~ Angela Carter

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas ~ Lucretius

Hector had no virtue?" "Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one." "We all do," Aeneas remarked. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Arma Virumque Cano (I sing of arms and of man) -The Aeneid ~ Aeneas Middleton

Then answered her son, who turns the stars in the sky:
'What way art thou bending fate, Mother? What dost thou ask
For these thy ships? May vessels built by the hands
Of mortal men claim an immortal right?
Is Aeneas to pass, sure of the outcome, through dangers
When nothing is sure? To what god is such power allowed? ~ Virgil

There's a saying," Aeneas said: "Keep an eye on Greeks when they offer gifts." He spoke wryly. "Horses, particularly. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors. ~ Jonathan Swift

Despairing Dido, queen of ancient Carthage, slain by her own hand as her magnificent lover Aeneas lifts anchor and sails away forever: this is one of the most haunting and permanent images of the classical world. ~ Thomas Cahill

The dank night is sweeping down from the sky
and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep. ~ Virgil

I am Aeneas, duty-bound, and known
Above high air of heaven by my fame. -AM #CymruAMbyth ~ Aeneas Middleton

Portia we can admire because, having seen her leave her Earthly Paradise to do a good deed in this world (one notices, incidentally, that in this world she appears in disguise), we know that she is aware of her wealth as a moral responsibility, but the other inhabitants of Belmont, Bassanio, Gratiano, Lorenzo and Jessica, for all their beauty and charm, appear as frivolous members of a leisure class, whose carefree life is parasitic upon the labors of others, including usurers. When we learn that Jessica has spent fourscore ducats of her father's money in an evening and bought a monkey with her mother's ring, we cannot take this as a comic punishment for Shylock's sin of avarice; her behavior seems rather an example of the opposite sin of conspicuous waste. Then, with the example in our minds of self-sacrificing love as displayed by Antonio, while we can enjoy the verbal felicity of the love duet between Lorenzo and Jessica, we cannot help noticing that the pairs of lovers they recall, Troilus and Cressida, Aeneas and Dido, Jason and Medea, are none of them examples of self-sacrifice or fidelity. […] Belmont would like to believe that men and women are either good or bad by nature, but Antonio and Shylock remind us that this is an illusion; in the real world, no hatred is totally without justification, no love totally innocent. ~ W.H. Auden

So Aeneas pleaded, his face streaming tears.
Three times he tried to fling his arms around his neck,
three times he embraced--nothing...the phantom
sifting through his fingers,
light as wind, quick as a dream in flight. ~ Virgil

in their supposed innocence of and opposition to empire, have become the mythic progenitors of the United States - almost as improbably as Solomon was of Ethiopia or Aeneas of Rome or his suppositious brother, Brut, of Britain. But almost everything most Americans think about the Plymouth colonists of 1620 is false. The truth is more credible. The first colonists in Massachusetts, exchanging accusations of "bestial, yea, diabolical affectations," were as divided and conflicted as people usually are when fate flings them together. Their leaders did not seek ~ Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

I recognize the vestiges of an old flame ~ Virgil

I remember Aeneas' words as I remember the poet's words. I remember every word because they are the fabric of my life, the warp I am woven on. All my life since Aeneas' death might seem a weaving torn out of the loom unfinished, a shapeless tangle of threads making nothing, but it is not so; for my mind returns as the shuttle returns always to the starting place, finding the pattern, going on with it. I was a spinner, not a weaver, but I have learned to weave. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas? ~ Abraham Cowley

By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we? ~ C.S. Lewis

Yet I feel like Theseus running madly through the coils of the labyrinth with horrors following at my heels and every twist bringing a new and dreaded sight. I dream and it pursues me I am sunk so far in horror heaped upon horror that I cannot taste wine or see the sun above. The world has ended and I don't know why I yet Live ~ Jo Graham

Duty bound, Aeneas, though he struggled with desire to calm and comfort her in all her pain, to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still with love if her, yet took the course heaven gave him and turned back to the fleet. ~ Virgil

A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman. ~ Tom Wolfe

Aeneas comes to her court a suppliant, impoverished and momentarily timid. He is a good-looking man. If anything, his scars emphasize that. The aura of his divine failure wraps around him like a cloak. Dido feels the tender contempt of the strong for the unlucky, but this is mixed with something else, a hunger that worms through her bones and leaves them hollow, to be filled with fire. ~ Kij Johnson