- Circe: What are you doing, Ulysses? Do you really think you can leave me?
- Ulysses: I left you a long time ago. The day my men died in the storm.
- Circe: And do you think your journey will last any longer than theirs?
- Ulysses: You will not hold me here.
- Circe: Listen to me! I shall give you something that will make you forget all your petty dreams. Your miserable kingdom. Your wife who grows old. Remain, and this very night, Olympus shall welcome a new god: Ulysses!
- Ulysses: Immortal?
- Circe: This is my gift - the greatest gift that has ever been offered to a man!
- Ulysses: [after a pause] No. There are greater gifts. To be born and to die, and in between to live like a man.
- Circe: To live like a man? Filled with petty fears?
- Ulysses: Only the fearful can know the value of courage.
- Circe: And old age? That fool flesh will rot one day! And at the end, nothing but death. This is the terrible heritage of man!
- Ulysses: I accept that inheritance. I no longer see myself falling in battle or in the fury of a storm. It would take much less. A puff of cool air... A sudden chill one night... But even so, this - this vulnerable mass of fears has dared to battle with a god - and has not yet been defeated! If it should be that one day men shall speak of me, I hope they say with pride that I was one of them.
- Circe: Their pride will not serve to warm you in the kingdom of darkness. I will bring centuries of light!
- Ulysses: I do not think it will sadden me too much to close my eyes, when the time comes.
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