Helen Of Troy Quotes

“Hattie pursed her lips. “Personally, I always found a thousand ships a little excessive. And Menelaus and Paris fought over Helen like dogs over a bone; no one asked her what she wanted. Even her obsession with Paris was compelled by a poisoned arrow—what’s romantic about that?”
“Passion,” Annabelle said, “Eros’s arrows are infused with passion.”
“Oh, passion, poison,” Hattie said, “either makes people addle-brained.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground.”
― Brenna Yovanoff

“Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Complete Works PergamonMedia

“What Helen of Troy did in her spare time and what she was 'really like' are not questions that torture us.”
― Janet Malcolm, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers

“Look—my feet don’t hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning In The Burned House: Poems

“So, this is how Helen of Troy felt.”
― Josephine Angelini, Scions

“I hoped for love

When I look at you face to face
not even Hermioni
seems to be your equal.
I compare you to blond Helen

among mortal women.
Know that you can free me
from every care,

and stay awake all night long
on dewy riverbanks”
― Sappho

“I spoke nonsense and I begin again:

The story is not true.
You never sailed on a benched ship.
You never entered the city of Troy.”
― Stesichoros

“The stories abounded, both recounting these cross-continental journeys and perhaps inspiring them – how Hellenic Jason gathered his Argonauts together (including Augeas, whose vast stables Herakles would be forced to clean) for adventure and profit, how he stopped off along the Bosphorus and discovered the land of the rising sun before other Greek heroes headed to Asia in search of Helen, Troy and glory. In the Homeric epics we hear of Jason travelling east where he tangles with Medea of Colchis, her aunt Circe and the feisty Amazon tribe. Lured by the promise of gold (early and prodigious metalworking did indeed take place in the region – perhaps sparking the Greek idea that the East was ‘rich in gold’) and then detained by the potions and poisons of Princess Medea, Jason succeeded in penetrating the Caucasus – a land which, in the Greek mind, wept with both peril and promise. It was here that Prometheus was chained to a rock with iron rivets for daring to steal fire from the gods. Archaeology east of Istanbul demonstrates how myth grazes history.”
― Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities

“I respect and reverence you, dear father-in-law, I wish I had chosen death rather than following your son, leaving behind my bridal chamber, my beloved daughter, my dear childhood friends and my kin. But I did not, and I pine away in sorrow.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Helen of Troy's face started the Trojan war. Stupid as it is, Never forget the true power of your womanhood.”
― Sahndra Fon Dufe

“I am Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, the Sea and the Sky, and a Messenger to the Gods.’
‘W-what?’ Any minute now, I’ll wake up!
.‘I am here to deliver a message from the Great Moon Goddess Selene, who speaks to you through the song of the Siren, that which seduces the soul with its beauty.”
― Tracey Morait, Episode

“Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is

the one you love. And easily proved.
Did not Helen, who far surpassed
all in beauty, desert the best of men
her husband and king

and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and dear parents? Merely
love's gaze made her bend
and led her

from her path.
These tales
remind me now of Anaktoria
who is gone.

And I would rather see her supple step
and motion of light on her face
than chariots of the Lydians or ranks
of foot soldiers in bronze.

Now this is impossible
yet among the living I pray for a share

and unexpectedly”
― Sappho

“I studied his proud, finely carved face, and indeed no lover could have watched Helen of Troy more intently or could have been more convinced of his own inferiority.”
― Fred Uhlman, Reunion

“She was called Helen - a name, I fear, that may have gone to her head, for she frequently acted as though she had confused herself with Helen of Troy.”
― Suzanne Rindell, The Other Typist

“Helen, your sinful deeds brought a bitter end
to Priam and his lovely children. They say
because of you holy Ilium was destroyed
by climbing fire.

But the son of Aiakos did not find such a wife
when he summoned the blessed gods to his wedding
and took the delicate sea nymph Thetis from
the watery palace

of Nereus, bringing her to the mountain cave
of the centaur Cheiron. There, the love of Peleus
for his sea-nymph led him to lie naked with
the untouched virgin,

and within the year she bore a son, Achilles;
bravest demigod and splendid driver of
tawny stallions. But for Helen, Ilium and
her people were destroyed.”
― Alkaios