The Metamorphoses Quotes

My soul would sing of metamorphoses. But since, o gods, you were the source of these bodies becoming other bodies, breathe your breath into my book of changes: may the song I sing be seamless as it...

(Deucalion:) "How would you feel, sad heart, if you'd survived the fatal flood, but I had lost my life? How would you, all alone, have borne the fear? With whom would you – alone – hav...

He looks at Daphne's hair as, unadorned, it hangs from her fair neck, and says: "Just think, if she should comb her locks!" He sees her lips and never tires of them; her fingers, hands, and wrists...

An animal with higher intellect, more noble, able – one to rule the rest: such was the living thing the earth still lacked. Then man was born. Either the Architect of All, the author of the u...

Those parts that bore some moisture from the earth became the flesh; whereas the solid parts – whatever could not bend – became the bones. What had been veins remained, with the same n...

Then Phoebus set aside the dazzling rays that wreathed his head; he had his son draw near and said, embracing him: "I have no cause to say you are not mine; Clymene's words about your birth are tru...

And then the goddess unleashed her rage; she struck her Grecian rival at once: she sent a Fury to harass poor Io's eyes and mind; she pierced her breast with an invisible, relentless goad; she drov...

"The pleasure love allots to you," he said, "is greater than the pleasure given men." But she contested that, and they agreed To let Tiresias decide, for he knew love both as a woman and a man. Tir...

Before the sea and lands began to be, before the sky had mantled every thing, then all of nature's face was featureless – what men call chaos: undigested mass of crude, confused, and scumble...

(Jupiter:) "I'd heard about this age of infamy; and hoping to disprove such tidings, I descended from Olympus' heights; I went from land to land, a god in human guise. Just now, it would be useless...