Theogony / Works and Days Quotes

“But he who neither thinks for himself nor learns from others, is a failure as a man.”
― Hesiod, Works and Days and Theogony

“He's only harming himself who's bent upon harming another”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“For a man can win nothing better than a good wife, and nothing more painful than a bad one.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“Do not piss as you stand and face the sun, but do it after the sun sets and before it rises, and even then do not be naked, for nights belong to the gods.
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Sire your children when you return from a feast of the gods, not when you return from an ill-omened burial.
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The sixth day of the month does not favor plants but is good for the birth of boys; it does not favor either the birth or the marriage of girls. But gelding of kids and lambs hurts less then.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet. Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis-holder and queenly Hera of Argos who walks on golden sandals and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-holder bright-eyed Athene, and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth-holder who shakes the earth, and reverend Themis and quick-glancing Aphrodite, and Hebe with the crown of gold, and fair Dione, Leto, Iapetus, and Cronos the crafty counsellor, Eos and great Helius and bright Selene, Earth too, and great Oceanus, and dark Night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me—the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis: 'Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things'.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“The road to virtue is long and goes steep up hill, hard climbing at first, but the last of it, when you get to the summit (if you get there) is easy going after the hard part.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“Another time for men to go sailing is in spring when a man first sees leaves on the topmost shoot of a fig-tree as large as the foot-print that a crow makes; then the sea is passable, and this is the spring sailing time.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“And the Fates [Night] bore, and merciless punishing Furies who prosecute the transgressions of men and gods—never do the goddesses cease from their terrible wrath until they have paid the sinner his due.”
― Hesiod, Theogony / Works and Days

“For a man acquires nothing better than the good wife, and nothing worse than the bad one, the foodskulk,* who singes a man without a brand, strong though he be, and consigns him to premature old age.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“A man of ineffectual labour, a postponer, does not fill his granary: it is application that promotes your cultivation, whereas a postponer of labour is constantly wrestling with Blights.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“No arserigged woman must deceive your wits with her wily twitterings when she pokes into your granary; he who believes a woman, believes cheaters.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Circe, daughter of the Sun, the son of Hyperion, in shared intimacy with Odysseus* the enduring of heart, bore Agrius and Latinus, the excellent and strong, who were lords of all the famous Tyrrhenians far away in a remote part of the Holy Isles.*”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“As for the daughters of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, Psamathe, noble among goddesses, bore Phocus* in shared intimacy with Aeacus* through golden Aphrodite, while the silverfoot goddess Thetis, surrendering to Peleus, gave birth to Achilles lionheart, breaker of men.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Farewell now, you dwellers in Olympus, and you islands, continents, and the salt sea between. But now, Olympian Muses, sweet of utterance, daughters of aegis bearing Zeus, sing of the company of goddesses, all those who were bedded with mortal men, immortal themselves, and bore children resembling the gods.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“And he came to the bed of Demeter abundant in nourishment, and she bore the white-armed Persephone, whom Aïdoneus* stole from her mother, Zeus the resourceful granting her to him.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Zeus as king of the gods made Metis* his first wife, the wisest among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to give birth to the pale-eyed goddess Athene, he tricked her deceitfully with cunning words and put her away in his belly on the advice of Earth and starry Heaven. They advised him in this way so that no other of the gods, the eternal fathers, should have the royal station instead of Zeus. For from Metis it was destined that clever children should be born: first a pale-eyed daughter, Tritogeneia,* with courage and sound counsel equal to her father’s, and then a son she was to bear, king of gods and men,* one proud of heart. But Zeus put her away in his belly first, so that the goddess could advise him of what was good or bad.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“When the blessed gods had completed their work and settled the matter of privileges with the Titans by force, then on Earth’s advice they urged that Olympian Zeus the wide-seeing should be king and lord of the immortals. And he allotted them privileges satisfactorily.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Now Zeus held in his strength no longer. Straightway his lungs were filled with fury, and he began to display his full might. From heaven and from Olympus together he came, with continuous lightning flashes, and the bolts flew thick and fast from his stalwart hand amid thunder and lightning, trailing supernatural flames. All around, the life-bearing earth rumbled as it burned, and the vast woodlands crackled loudly on every side. The whole land was seething, and the streams of Oceanus, and the undraining sea. The hot blast enveloped the chthonic Titans;* the indescribable flames reached the divine sky, and the sparkling flare of the thunderbolt and the lightning dazzled the strongest eyes.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“the excellent Kottos straightway replied: ‘Friend, what you say is not unfamiliar to us. We know that you have exceeding intelligence and exceeding insight, and that you have been the immortals’ saviour from chilling peril, and that it is by your providence that we have come back up from the misty darkness and our harsh bondage, lord, son of Kronos, after sufferings we never anticipated. So now in turn, with fixed purpose and willing spirit, we will secure your supremacy in the terrible slaughter by fighting the Titans in fierce combat.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“For long they had fought against each other in fierce combat, and the struggle gave them pain at heart, the Titan gods and those that were born of Kronos: the proud Titans from high Othrys,* and from Olympus the gods, givers of blessings, whom lovely-haired Rhea bore bedded with Kronos. They had been fighting each other continually now for ten full years, and the fight gave them pain at heart; and to neither side came solution or end of the bitter strife, and the outcome of the war was equally balanced. But when Zeus provided those allies with full sustenance, nectar and ambrosia, such as the gods themselves eat, and the proud spirit waxed in all their breasts, then the father of gods and men spoke to them: ‘Hearken to me, proud children of Earth and Heaven, and let me say what the spirit in my breast bids me. For long now we have been fighting each other for victory and power, day after day, the Titan gods and we who were born of Kronos. But now you must display your great strength and your terrible hands against the Titans in the fearful slaughter, remembering our faithful friendship, and how much you suffered before our decision brought you back into the light from your dismal bondage down in the misty darkness.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Ever since that, the peoples on earth have burned white bones for the immortals on aromatic altars.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Atlas, under strong constraint, holds up the broad sky with his head and tireless hands, standing at the ends of the earth, away by the dear-voiced Hesperides, for Zeus the resourceful assigned him this lot. And he bound crafty Prometheus in inescapable fetters, grievous bonds, driving them through the middle of a pillar. And he set a great winged eagle upon him, and it fed on his immortal liver, which grew the same amount each way at night as the great bird ate in the course of the day.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“He set his father’s brothers* free from their baneful bondage, the sons of Heaven whom their father in his folly had imprisoned; and they returned thanks for his goodness by giving him thunder and lightning aRd the smoking bolt, which mighty Earth had kept hidden up to then. With these to rely on he is lord of mortals and immortals.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Rapidly then the lord’s courage and resplendent limbs grew; and when the due time came round, the great crooked-schemer Kronos, tricked by the cunning counsel of Earth, defeated by his son’s strength and stratagem, brought his brood back up. The first he spewed out was the stone, the last he swallowed. Zeus fixed it in the wide-pathed earth at holy Pytho,* in the glens of Parnassus, to be a monument thereafter and a thing of wonder for mortal men.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Then she wrapped a large stone in babycloth and delivered it to the son of Heaven, the great lord, king of the Former Gods.* Seizing it in his hands, he put it away in his belly, the brute, not realizing that thereafter not a stone but his son remained, secure and invincible, who before long was to defeat him by physical strength and drive him from his high station, himself to be king among the immortals.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“The others great Kronos swallowed, as each of them reached their mother’s knees* from her holy womb. His purpose was that none but he of the lordly Celestials should have the royal station among the immortals. For he learned from Earth and starry Heaven that it was fated for him to be defeated by his own child, powerful though he was, through the designs of great Zeus. So he kept no blind man’s watch, but observed and swallowed his children. Rhea suffered terrible grief. But when she was about to give birth to Zeus, father of gods and men, then she begged her dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise a plan so that she could bear her child in secrecy and make Kronos pay her father’s furies* and those of the children he had been swallowing, great Kronos the crooked-scheming.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Rhea, surrendering to Kronos, bore resplendent children: Hestia,* Demeter,* and gold-sandalled Hera, mighty Hades who lives under the earth, merciless of heart, and the booming Shaker of Earth, and Zeus the resourceful, father of gods and men, under whose thunder the broad earth is shaken.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“Phoebe came to Koios’ bed of delight; and conceiving then, goddess with god united in intimacy, she bore sable-robed Leto,* ever gentle, mild towards men and immortal gods, gentle from the beginning, most kindly in Olympus.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“people of Cadmus: the Thebans. The Sphinx sat by the roadside at Thebes and killed every passer-by who could not answer her riddle, ‘What creature is two legged, three-legged, and four-legged at different times?’ Finally Oedipus did answer it—‘Man’—and that was the end of her.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days

“As for the genitals, just as he first cut them off with his instrument of adamant and threw them from the land into the surging sea, even so they were carried on the waves for a long time. About them a white foam grew from the immortal flesh, and in it a girl formed. First she approached holy Cythera;* then from there she came to sea-girt Cyprus. And out stepped a modest and beautiful goddess, and the grass began to grow all round beneath her slender feet. Gods and men call her Aphrodite, because she was formed in foam,* and Cytherea, because she approached Cythera, and Cyprus-born, because she was born in wave-washed Cyprus, and ‘genial’,* because she appeared out of genitals. Eros and fair Desire attended her birth and accompanied her as she went to join the family of gods.”
― Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days