Epic Poems Quotes

• My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.

  Laurie Anderson

  Dream, Writing, Epic

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• Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Philosophy, Epic, Middle

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• With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

  Lascelles Abercrombie

  Determination, Epic, Men

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• If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

  Lascelles Abercrombie

  Fall, Epic, Poetry Is

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• Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.

  Sophocles

  Fear, Men, Oedipus

  Sophocles (1955). “The Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus [and] Antigone”

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• Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

  Seamus Heaney

  Two, Mind, Done

  Seamus Heaney (2009). “Beowulf”, p.30, Faber & Faber

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• Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller.

  Anne Carson

  Epic, Sound, Pressure

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Mean, Epic, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving tapestry, he had better shut up, he'll never do any good at all.

  William Morris

  Epic, Weaving, Shut Up

  William Morris (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of William Morris (Illustrated)”, p.6723, Delphi Classics

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• This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.

  Dervla Murphy

  Moving, Epic, Past

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.39, The Overlook Press

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• Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue.

  Roger Ebert

  Epic, Credit, Iliad

  Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Party, Humor

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.68, Knopf

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• Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.

  Herman Melville

  Spiritual, Thinking, Air

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.40

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• It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Writing, Should Have, Poet

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• Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Voice, Giving

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 58

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• He oft finds med'cine, who his griefe imparts; But double griefs afflict concealing harts, As raging flames who striveth to supresse.

  Edmund Spenser

  Grief, Epic, Flames

  Edmund Spenser, Carol V. Kaske (2006). “The Faerie Queene, Book One”, p.34, Hackett Publishing

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• A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Hypocrite, Men, Laughing

  Alexandre Dumas (2016). “ALEXANDRE DUMAS Ultimate Collection: 40+ Titles Including The Three Musketeers Series, The Marie Antoinette Novels, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Valois Trilogy and more (Illustrated): Historical Novels, Adventure Classics, True Crime Stories & Biography (Queen Margot, The Black Tulip, The Queen’s Necklace, Taking the Bastille, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Sicilian Bandit…)”, p.235, e-artnow

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• A Concordance of Leaves is an epic poem of the indomitable yet fragile human spirit. Philip Metres brings Palestine and Palestinians into English with rare luminosity. One feels echoes of Oppen's succinct tenderness in the depiction of the numerous characters of this work. Without other, there is no self. And that other is the stranger who must be loved. Concordance is, after all, a wedding poem-leaves and pages in search of a certain passage toward harmony.

  Fady Joudah

  Character, Epic, Echoes

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• Nature is a book of many pages and each page tells a fascinating story to him who learns her language. Our fertile valleys and craggy mountains recite an epic poem of geologic conflicts. The starry sky reveal gigantic suns and space and time without end.

  A. E. Douglass

  Nature, Book, Epic

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• Why haven't we fixed sick yet? You scientists there-- put down those starfish and HELP us. I hereby demand that all the people who are good at math make the world free of illness. The rest of us will write you epic poems and staple them together into a booklet.

  Daniel Handler

  Writing, Math, Epic

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• We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Usual, Ruts, Imagine

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “War and Peace: plus free audiobook”, p.1256, Wizio Publishing

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• It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.

  Don DeLillo

  Epic, Cities, People

  Don DeLillo (2010). “Point Omega”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

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