Achilles Quotes - Page 2

• Ah, beer, my one weakness. My Achille's heel, if you will.

  Homer

  Beer, Weakness, Ifs

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• Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?

  Plutarch

  Games, Said, Conqueror

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.208

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• Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

  Jonathan Swift

  Taken, Aeneas, Giving

  Jonathan Swift (2010). “The Battle of the Books: And Other Works, Including 'A Modest Proposal'”, p.187, The Floating Press

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• Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall

  Homer

  Hate, Fall, Men

  Homer (2015). “The Iliad & The Odyssey”, p.337, Booklassic

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• Achilles too staggered a moment. He felt his soul change colour. Blood pooled at his feet, and though he continued to stand upright and triumphant in the sun, his spirit set off on its own downward path and approached the boarders of an unknown region.

  David Malouf

  Blood, Feet, Soul

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• Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall.

  Dwight Longenecker

  Hero, Wings, Ideas

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• I'm not known as a singer, but in life I like to do things that are a bit beyond my reach to keep myself from slipping. I find that technology has made it so that we don't need to have a memory system, and as I get older I want to do things that challenge me. What could be more challenging than doing this show with a knee that's been replaced, after tearing my Achilles heel with a baker's cyst on the back of my knee? And then I have to try and dance!

  George Hamilton

  Memories, Technology, Challenges

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• Nowadays people are born to find fault. When they look at Achilles, they see only his heel.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  People, Looks, Faults

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1994). “Aphorisms”, Ariadne Press (CA)

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• Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable

  Homer

  Father, Thinking, Compassion

  Homer (2013). “The Iliad: An Epic Poem About the Trojan War, the Ten-Year Siege of the City of Troy (Ilium) by a Coalition of Greek States - Battles and Events During the Weeks of a Quarrel Between King Agamemnon and the Warrior Achilles (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.353, Lulu Press, Inc

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• First of all, most traders don't have a winning strategy. Second, even among those traders who do, many don't follow their strategy. Trading puts pressure on weaker human traits and seems to seek out each individual's Achilles' heel.

  Gil Blake

  Winning, Pressure, Firsts

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• Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today.

  Stan Lee

  Names, Today, Heels

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• It should be the aim of grand strategy to discover and pierce the Achilles' heel of the opposing government's power to make war. Strategy, in turn, should seek to penetrate a joint in the harness of the opposing forces. To apply one's strength where the opponent is strong weakens oneself disproportionately to the effect attained. To strike with strong effect, one must strike at weakness.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Strong, Military, War

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• A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them?

  Charles Lindbergh

  Children, Conquer The World, Single Life

  "Aviation, Geography, and Race". Reader's Digest, pp. 64-67, November 1939.

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• What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason — instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.

  David Simon

  Selfish, Oedipus, People

  "Stealing Life" by Margaret Talbot, www.newyorker.com. October 22, 2007.

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• But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.

  Orson Scott Card

  Winning, Naughty, Risk

  Orson Scott Card (2003). “Shadow Puppets”, p.333, Macmillan

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• Annabeth frowned. "That doesn't make sense. But why were you visiting --" Her eyes widened. "Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles. Hestia said the same thing. Did you . . . did you bathe in the River Styx?" "Don't change the subject." "Percy! Did you or not?" "Um . . .maybe a little.

  Rick Riordan

  Eye, Rivers, Bears

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• We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.

  Toni Morrison

  Ajax, Littles, Dies

  "Toni Morrison: 'I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness'". Interview With Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.

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• Christ on a cracker. You raped Achilles!

  P. C. Cast

  Christ, Crackers

  P. C. Cast (2008). “Warrior Rising”, p.101, Penguin

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• But don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I'm limp, by God.

  J. D. Salinger

  Beautiful, Sunset, Forget

  j.d. salinger (1961). “franny and zooey”

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• But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’ I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, 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.

  Homer

  Grieving, Winning, Men

  Homer (2008). “Odyssey, Homer”, Spark Publishing Group

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• I think time is a constraint to destroy and then reinvent. If you give me a constraint, I'll accept it. But I always try to move it around, or to readapt it. Ecco! If you lock me in a room, well I'll go out through the window! I always remember Achille Castiglioni, one of my mentors, and he always said that in industrial design you have the idea, the fantasy, the concepts - that's the marmalade! - but the constraint of the brief is the bread. You need both in order to find structure for your ideas.

  Patricia Urquiola

  Moving, Thinking, Order

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• Percy Jackson," Hermes said, "because you have taken on the curse of Achilles, I must spare you. You are in the hands of the Fates now. But you will never speak to me like that again. You have no idea how much I have sacrificed, how much—" His voice broke, and he shrank back to human size. "My son, my greatest pride . . . my poor May . . ." He sounded so devastated I didn't know what to say. One minute he was ready to vaporize us. Now he looked like he needed a hug.

  Rick Riordan

  Taken, Fate, Pride

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• Anybody who has political ambition has an Achilles heel.

  James Callis

  Ambition, Political, Heels

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• Love, why have you sought the horde
  of spearsmen, why the tent
  Achilles pitched beside the river-ford?

  Hilda Doolittle

  War, Rivers, Tents

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.134, New Directions Publishing

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• I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.

  James A. Michener

  Horse, Children, War

  "Storytelling Phenomenon". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. January 10, 1991.

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