The Odyssey
Homer (tr. Fagles)

"But the great leveler, Death: not even the g.ds can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last" (3.269-71). ~~ Athena

"That is the g.ds' work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come..." (8.649-51).

"No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By g.d I'd rather slave on earth for another man - some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead" (11.555-58). ~~ the ghost of Achilles admonishing Odysseus for admiring the former's high standing in the afterlife

"It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly" (12.490-91). ~~ Odysseus

"Homer makes us Hearers, and Virgil leaves us Readers" (p. 489) ~~ Fagles quoting Alexander Pope, himself a translator of Homer

Fagles' is the third or fourth Odyssey translation I've read, and the most poetic. In July, I read the Fitzgerald translation of the Iliad, and while I admire his translation, I much prefer Fagles' (however, not enough to reread the Iliad so soon).

I jotted down 20-odd pages' worth of quotations and my comments, but I'm not about to post long passages of cave descriptions here. :)

Next up is Hesiod's Theogony.