Every novel is a debtor to Homer. [ Emerson ]
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist. [ Francis Wayland ]
Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,
Who living had no roof to shroud his head. [ Thos. Heywood ]
We must write as Homer wrote, not what he wrote. [ Theophile Vian ]
Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor.
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need. [ John Sheffield ]
Repetition is every where unacceptable, though it were in Homer. [ Proverb ]
We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer. Our storydressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best. [ Burton ]
Two orders of poets I admit, but no third; the creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and reflective or perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson); and both these must be first-rate in their range. [ John Ruskin ]
The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray. [ Willmott ]
Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]
The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images: we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately. [ La Bruyere ]
We lose in depth of expression when we go to inferior animals for comparisons with human beauty. Homer calls Juno ox-eyed; and the epithet suits well with the eyes of that goddess, because she may be supposed, with all her beauty, to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you with a royal indifference. [ Leigh Hunt ]
All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman. Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. [ Colton ]
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose. [ Balzac ]
Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing was more grateful; Aristotle afirmed that beauty was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a favor bestowed by the gods. [ From the Italian ]