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“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

“A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf and the Critics

“Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.”
― Woody Allen

“And a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards, in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

“Monsters are getting more uppity, too (...) I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door (...) and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That's the respect you get.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“It is a great wonder
How Almighty God in his magnificence
Favors our race with rank and scope
And the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide.
Sometimes He allows the mind of a man
Of distinguished birth to follow its bent,
Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth
And forts to command in his own country.
He permits him to lord it in many lands
Until the man in his unthinkingness
Forgets that it will ever end for him.
He indulges his desires; illness and old age
Mean nothing to him; his mind is untroubled
By envy or malice or thought of enemies
With their hate-honed swords. The whole world
Conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst
Until an element of overweening
Enters him and takes hold
While the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses,
Grown too distracted. A killer stalks him,
An archer who draws a deadly bow.
And then the man is hit in the heart,
The arrow flies beneath his defenses,
The devious promptings of the demon start.
His old possessions seem paltry to him now.
He covets and resents; dishonors custom
And bestows no gold; and because of good things
That the Heavenly powers gave him in the past
He ignores the shape of things to come.
Then finally the end arrives
When the body he was lent collapses and falls
Prey to its death; ancestral possessions
And the goods he hoarded and inherited by another
Who lets them go with a liberal hand.

“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.
Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,
Eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride.
For a brief while your strength is in bloom
But it fades quickly; and soon there will follow
Illness or the sword to lay you low,
Or a sudden fire or surge of water
Or jabbing blade or javelin from the air
Or repellent age. Your piercing eye
Will dim and darken; and death will arrive,
Dear warrior, to sweep you away.”
― Seamus Heaney

“Let whoever can win glory before death.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

“A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent with loss of life for imagined insults.”
― Unknown, Beowulf

“Except in the life of a hero, the whole world's meaningless. The hero sees the value beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile. (p.77)”
― John Gardner, Grendel

“I am mad with joy.--At least I think it's joy. Strangers have come, and it's a whole new game. I kiss the ice on the frozen creeks, I press my ear to it, honoring the water that rattles below, for by water they came: the icebergs parted as if gently pushed back by enormous hands, and the ship sailed through, sea-eager, foamy-necked, white sails, riding the swan-road, flying like a bird! O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows!”
― John Gardner

“So it goes with me day by day and age by age, I tell myself. Locked in the deadly progression of moon and stars. I shake my head, muttering darkly on shaded paths, holding conversation with the only friend and comfort this world allows, my shadow.”
― John Gardner, Grendel

“Whoever remains for long here in this earthly life will enjoy and endure more than enough.”
― Unknown, Beowulf

“El hecho es que la participación de un »å°ù²¹²µÃ³²Ô en la epopeya de Beowulf parece disminuirla a nuestro ojos. Creemos en el león como realidad y como símbolo; creemos en el minotauro como símbolo, ya que no como realidad; pero el »å°ù²¹²µÃ³²Ô se el menos afortunado de los animales fabulosos.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Literaturas germánicas medievales

“They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,
gold under gravel, gone to earth,
as useless to men now as it ever was.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

“The last week hadn’t been any better, come to think of it. On Monday they arrived at Gorda, just to find that the cargo of electronics he was to ship to Beowulf had been taken by another freighter for a lower fee. It took him until Wednesday before he found another cargo â€� which had to reach Earth by Saturday. The last straw was when his crew mutinied a day out of the Hermes system and demanded a pay increase. The union tended to call that sort of thing “collective bargainingâ€�, not actually mutiny, but hey â€� the results are the same. He tended to favor the term “piracyâ€�, but this wasn’t the high seas and out here, there were real pirates to worry about. His former crew had also wanted more time off and a better cook â€� at least one who knew how which end of a frying pan to hold. He was unable to comply, and so was forced to stop at Beowulf anyway. That was the last time he saw them. Fortunately for him, Weaver, Fuller and Jang opted to stay with him. Whether it was out of loyalty, or perhaps just convenience, he never knew.”
― Christina Engela, Blachart

“But, in the end, it was none of these things, of course. It was only Hrothgar's claustrophobic mead hall with the monster waiting in the darkness without. We had our Grendel, to be sure. We even had our Hrothgar if one squints a bit at sad King Billy's poor slouched profile.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“Wind and water raged with storms, wave and shingle were shackled in ice...until another year appeared in the yard as it does to this day, the seasons constant, the wonder of light coming over us. Then winter was gone, earth’s lap grew lovely...longing woke in the cooped-up exile for a voyage home.”
― Unknown, Beowulf

“Like everyone who's ever translated this text, I had some fun.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“Beowulf is usually seen as a masculine text, but I think that's somewhat unfair. The poem, while (with one exception) not structured around the actions of women, does contain extensive portrayals of motherhood and peace-weaving marital compromise, female warriors, and speculation on what it means to lose a son.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“... Whose forbidden hold was this?
What had he provoked? He wrapped trembling fingers around
the first small, shining thing he found, and fled. For the vault
was more than a treasury: piles of preciouses nested
beneath the coils of a snoring serpent. It was a bed.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings! In the old days,
everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound. Only
stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danesâ€� song, hoarded for hungry times.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“Now there are no heroes, no soothing music,
No harp, no hawk soaring through hall,
No swift horses trampling green grass.
We existed; now we’re extinct.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf

“Fate oft saveth a man not doomed to die, when his valour fails not.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

“The wildness in them had to brim over.”
― Unknown, Beowulf

“You're going to forget everything I teach you,' Mr Stressman said, petting his mustache. 'Everything. Maybe you'll remember that Beowulf fought a monster. Maybe you'll remember that "To be or not to be" is Hamlet, not Macbeth... But everything else? Forget about it.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Gaeth a wyrd swa hio scel!
[Wyrd goes as it should so]”
― Anonymous

“Mammoth columns were rooted in the flagstones and the sawdust. Arches flew in broad hoops from capital to capital; crossing in diagonals, they groined the barrel-vaults that hung dimly above the smoke. The place should have been lit by pine-torches in stanchions. It was beginning to change, turning now, under my clouding glance, into the scenery for some terrible Germanic saga, where snow vanished under the breath of dragons whose red-hot blood thawed sword-blades like icicles. It was a place for battle-axes and bloodshed and the last pages of the Nibelungenlied when the capital of Hunland is in flames and everybody in the castle hacked to bits. Things grew quickly darker and more fluid; the echo, the splash, the boom and the road of fast currents sunk this beer-hall under the Rhine-bed; it became a cavern full of more dragons, misshapen guardians of gross treasure; or the fearful abode, perhaps, where Beowulf, after tearing the Grendel's arm out of its socket, tracked him over the snow by the bloodstains and, reaching the mere's edge, dived in to swim many fathoms down and slay his loathsome water-hag of a mother in darkening spirals of gore.”
― Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

“Fate goes ever as fate must.”
― Beowulf, Beowulf

“...it is the business of myth to condense and contain the most fundamental sources of cultural tension -- those areas in which the self and the world are in greatest friction -- and to validate current ideologies by dramatizing them and retrojecting their contours into the past”
― R.M. Liuzza, Beowulf

“...it is the business of myth to condense and contain the most fundamental sources of cultural tension -- those areas in which the self and the world are in greatest friction -- and to validate current ideologies by dramatizing them and retrojecting their contours into the past.”
― R.M. Liuzza, Beowulf