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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Homer (c. 700 B.C.)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 2092
AUTHOR: Homer (c. 700 B.C.)
QUOTATION: Thou know’st the o’er-eager vehemence of youth,
How quick in temper, and in judgement weak.
ATTRIBUTION: HOMER, The Iliad, book 23, lines 677–78, trans. Edward, Earl of Derby, ed. 5, vol. 2, pp. 372–73 (1865).

The many translations of these lines of Homer’s vary: The Iliad of Homer, trans. into blank verse by William Cullen Bryant, vol. 4, p. 139 (1905),
“Thou dost know
The faults to which the young are ever prone;
The will is quick to act, the judgment weak”;
Robert Graves, The Anger of Achilles, p. 364 (1959), “It is easy for a youngster to go wrong from hastiness and lack of thought”; and Robert Fitzgerald, p. 553, lines 588–89 (1974), “You know a young man may go out of bounds: / his wits are nimble, but his judgment slight.”
SUBJECTS: Youth