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The extraordinarily is
ordinary
"Depend upon it there is
nothing so unnatural as the commonplace"
--Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of
Identity," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 41
Truth is stranger than
fiction
"Life is infinitely
stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not dare to conceive the
things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand
in hand, however over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at
the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings,
the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through
generations, and leading to the most outrˆ© results, it would make all fiction with its
conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."
--Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of
Identity," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 41
The importance of
details
"It has long been an axiom
of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
--Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of
Identity," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 44
Be Bold
"Be bold, nothing to fear.
In every venture the bold man comes off best"
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 181
Balance
"Balance is best in all things"
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 189
Telemachus's identity
crisis
"Mother has always told me
I'm his son. It's true,
but I am not so certain. Who, on his own,
has ever really known who gave him life?
Would to god I'd been the son of a happy man
whom old age overtook in the midst of his possessions!
Now, think of the most unlucky mortal ever born -
since you ask me, yes, they say I am his son."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. I, ln. 249ff
Living up to our fathers
"Few sons are the equals of
their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 102, ln. 309
The gift of words
"Some of the words you'll
find within yourself, the rest some power will inspire you to say. You least of
all- I know- were born and reared without the gods' good will."
--The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 108, ln. 29
The sons of kings
"You must be born of kings,
bred by the gods to wield the royal scepter. No mean men could sire sons
like you."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 4, ln. 70f
A lasting impression
"It's always the latest
song, the one that echoes last in the listeners' ears, that people praise the
most."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p.89, ln. 404
Any life is better than
death
"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, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 265, ln. 556
Odysseus the mortal
"Cross that thought from your mind.
I'm nothing like the immortal gods who rule the skies,
Either in build or breeding. I'm just a mortal man.
Whom do you know most saddled down with sorrow?
They are the ones I'd equal, grief for grief.
And I could tell a tale of still more hardship,
All I've suffered, thanks to the gods' will."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 7, ln 244ff
You must choose your own
route
"But once your crew has
rowed you past the Sirens
a choice of routes is yours. I cannot advise you
which to take, or lead you through it all--
you must decide for yourself..."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 12, ln. 61ff
No one is nameless
"Surely no man in the world
is nameless, all told.
Born high, born low, as soon as he sees the light
his parents always name him, once he's born."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 8, ln. 620ff
Home of the gods
"The bright-eyed goddess
sped away to Olympus, where,
they say, the gods' eternal mansion stands unmoved,
never rocked by galewinds, never drenched by rains,
nor do the drifting snows assail it, no, the clear air
stretches away without a cloud, and a great radiance
plays across that world where the blithe gods
live all their days in bliss."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 6, ln. 169ff
Food before talk
"But despite my misery, let
me finish my dinner.
The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget -
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
'Eat! Drink!' It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, 'Fill me up!'"
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 7, ln. 250ff
Odysseus' homecoming
"No other Odysseus will
ever return to you. That man and I are one, that man you see...here after many
years of hardships, endless wanderings, after twenty years I have come home to
native ground at last."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 16, ln. 232
Optimistic Odysseus
"All is now made good, my
heart's desire...May I find an unswerving wife when I reach home, and loved
ones hale, unharmed! And you, my friends remaining here in your kingdom now,
may you delight in your loyal wives and children! May the gods rain down all
kinds of fortune on your lives, misfortune never harbor in your homeland!"
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, bk. 13, p. 287ff
Reunion of Father and Son
"Why confuse me with one who never dies?
No, I am your father -
the Odysseus you wept for all your days
you bore a world of pain, the cruel abuse of men."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 344, ln. 211ff
Telemachus' Disbelief
"No, you're not Odysseus! Not my father!
Just some spirit spellbinding me now -
to make me ache with sorrow all the more
Impossible for a mortal to work such marvels
not with his own devices, not unless some god
comes down in person, eager to make that mortal
young or old - like that! Why, just now
you were old, and wrapped in rags, but now,
look
you seem like a god who rules the skies up there!"
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 344, ln. 220ff
Justice of the Gods
"Trust me, the blessed gods have no love
for crime.
They honor justice, honor, the decent acts of men."
--Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, p. 304, ln. 96
Nothing Feebler than a Man
"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. Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth, turn
as the days turn...as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn."
--Homer, The Odyssey
A Kind Master
Never another
master as kind as he!
I'll never fine one - no matter where I go,
not even if i went back to mother and father,
the house where I was born and my parents reared me once.
Ah, but much as I grieve for them, much as I long
to lay m eyes on them, set foot on the old soil,
It's longing for him, him that wrings my heart - Odysseus, lost and gone!
--Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 14, ln. 161ff
Dreams
"Dreams are hard to
unravel, wayward, drifting things- not all we glimpse in them will come to
pass. Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams, one is made of ivory, the
other made of horn. Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved are will-o-the
wisps, their message bears no fruit. The dreams that pass through the gates of
polished horn are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them."
--Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 19, p. 408
Penelope's Grief
"All day long I [Penelope] indulge myself in sighs and tears
as I see to my tasks, direct the household women.
When night falls and the world lies lost in sleep,
I take to my bed, my heart throbbing, about to break,
anxieties swarming, piercing - I may go mad with grief.
Like Pandareus' daughter"
--Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 19, ln. 580ff
Destroy
"A black day it was
when he took ship to see that cursed city...
Destroy, I call it- I hate to
say its name!"
--Homer, The Odyssey, p. 399, ln. 297
Penelope Weeps
"As she listened on, her tears flowed and
soaked her cheeks as the heavy snow melts down from the high mountain
ridges, snow the wild west piles there and the warm east thaws and
the snow, melting, swells the rivers to overflow their banks- so she dissolved
into tears, streaming down her lovely cheeks, weeping for him, her husband,
sitting there beside her."
--Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 19, ln. 236ff
Odysseus Strings his Bow
"Like an expert singer skilled at lyre and
song who strains a string to a new peg with ease, making the pliant sheep-gut
fast at either end. So with his
virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow."
--Homer, The Odyssey, p. 437, ln. 453
Jekyll's Dilemma
"My two natures had memory
in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them.
Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with
a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde;
but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain
bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll
had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference. To
cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long
secretly indulged and had of begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to
die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and
forever, despised and friendless."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classic), 115
Hyde-and-go-seek
"'If he be Mr. Hyde,' he
had thought, 'I shall be Mr. Seek.'"
--Utterson in Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet
Classic), 49
Perpetrator or victim?
"If I am the chief of sinners, I am the
chief of sufferers also."
--Jekyll in Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (Signet Classic), 74
Delighting in evil
"I knew myself at the first breath of this
new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my
original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like
wine."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classic), 107
Duality of human nature
"With every day, and from both side of my intelligence,
the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by
whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that
man is not truly one, but truly two."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classic), 104
Pent-up desires
"If each, I told myself, could be housed in
separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable."
--Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classic), 105
Balance of good and evil
"I began to spy a danger that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my
nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be
forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine."
--Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classic), 113
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