Metamorphoses Quotes

Quote 1: "in the whole world the countenance / Of nature was the same, all one, well named / Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, / Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds / Of ill-joined elements compressed together." Book 1 -- The Creation, lines 7-11

Quote 2: "Third in succession came the race of bronze, / Of fiercer temperament, more readily / Disposed to war, yet free from wickedness." Book 1 -- The Ages of Mankind, line 125-7

Quote 3: "'Leave / My temple, veil your heads, loosen your robes, / And cast behind you your great mother's bones.'" Book 1 -- Deucalion and Pyrrha, line 376-9

Quote 4: "a strange new bird, a swan, that fears / To trust the sky or Jove, remembering / The unfairness of that fiery bolt he hurled." Book 2 -- Phaethon, line 376-8

Quote 5: "'Grow strong, dear boy, / Healer of all the world. Often to you / Men shall owe health and life, and yours shall be / The right to win again departed souls, / And, though you dare this once in heaven's despite, / Jove's bolt will thwart that gift a second time. / You, now divine, shall be a lifeless corpse, / And from a corpse become divine again, / And twice you shall renew your destiny.'" Book 2 -- Ocyrhoe, line 640-8

Quote 6: "'Was that a sacred snake / My spear transfixed when I had made my way / From Sidon's walls and scattered on the soil / The serpent's teeth, those seeds of magic power? / If it is he the jealous gods avenge, With wrath so surely aimed, I pray that I / May be a snake and stretch along the ground.'" Book 4 -- The Transformation of Cadmus, line 571-6

Quote 7: "'I'm too great to suffer Fortune's blows; / Much she may take, yet more than much she'll leave. / My blessings banish fear.'" Book 6 -- Niobe, line 91-3

Quote 8: "'You'll pay my score one day. I'll shed my shame / And shout what you have done. If I've the chance, / I'll walk among the crowds: or, if I'm held / Locked in the woods, my voice shall fill the woods / And move the rocks to pity.'" Book 6 -- Tereus, Procne, and Philomela, line 46-50

Quote 9: "'Grant, / Thous best of sires, so many citizens / To me and stock again my empty walls!'" Book 7 -- Minos, Aeacus, The Plague at Aegina, and The Myrmidons, line 26-8

Quote 10: "'Take care / To fly a middle course, lest if you sink / Too low the waves may weight your feathers; if / Too high, the heat may burn them. Fly half-way / Between the two.'" Book 8 -- Daedalus and Icarus, line 198-202

Quote 11: "'What shall I do? / Before my eyes I see my brothers' wounds, / The picture of that slaughter -- yet, again, / A mother's loyal love rends my resolve.'" Book 8 -- Althaea and Meleager, line 504-8

Quote 12: "Rumour who talks and loves to tangle true / With false, and from near nothing flourishes / On her own lies" Book 9 -- Hercules, Nessus, and Deianira, line 141-3

Quote 13: "'To you (Pluto) are owed / Ourselves and all creation: a brief while / We linger; then we hasten, late or soon, / To one abode; here one road leads us all; / Here in the end is home; over humankind / Your kingdom keeps the longest sovereignty. / She too, when ripening years reach their due term, / Shall own your rule. The favour that I ask / Is but to enjoy her love'" Book X -- Orpheus and Eurydice, line 31-9

Quote 14: "'Long to our love seems every waiting hour, / But by my father's radiance I swear, / If only the Fates let me, I'll return / Before the moon twice fills her silver orb'" Book 11 -- Ceyx and Alcyone, line 52-5

Quote 15: "'This wrong you've done me needs an enormous wish -- / Put pain like that beyond my power. Grant me / To cease to be a woman -- everything / That gift will be to me.'" Book 12 -- Caenis, line 201-4

Quote 16: "'He who destroyed your many brothers, / He destroyed you, Achilles, doom of Troy / And my bereaver. But when Paris' arrows / And Phoebus' felled him, now for sure, I said, / We need not fear Achilles: now again / I had to fear him: in the sepulchre / His ashes raged against our race; entombed, / We felt him as our foe. For him I bore / My children! Mighty Ilium lies low. / In tragedy our nation's ruin reached / Its end; but end it has. For me alone / Troy lives; my woes stream on.'" Book 13 -- Hecuba, Polyxena, and Polydorus, line 501-10

Quote 17: "seek / Their ancient mother and ancestral shores." Book 13 -- The Pilgrimage of Aeneas, line 376-77

Quote 18: "'Why prefer you Acis' arms to mine? / Acis may please himself and please, alas, / You, Galatea. Give me but the chance, / He'll find my strength no smaller than my size. / I'll gouge his living guts, I'll rend his limbs / And strew them in the fields and in the sea.'" Book 13 -- Acis and Galatea, line 863-8

Quote 19: "'hates a stony heart.'" Book 14 -- Pomona and Vertumnus, line 697

Quote 20: "There is no death -- no death, but only change / And innovation; what men call birth / Is but a different new beginning; death / Is but to cease to be the same." Book 15--The Doctrines of Pythagoras, line 72-5