Achilles Quotes

1. "Thought and science are therefore raising problems which their terms of study can never answer, many of which are doubtless problems only for thought. The trisection of an angle is similarly an insoluble problem only for compass and straight-edge construction, and Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise so long as their progress is considered piecemeal, endlessly having the distance between them. However, as it is not Achilles but the method of measurement which fails to catch up with the tortoise, so it is not man but his method of thought which fails to find fulfillment in experience."
Author: Alan Wilson Watts

2. "Everywhere in Homer's saga of the rage of Achilles and the battles before Troy we are made conscious at one and the same time of war's ugly brutality and what Yeats called its "terrible beauty." The Iliad accepts violence as a permanent factor in human life and accepts it without sentimentality, for it is just as sentimental to pretend that war does not have its monstrous ugliness as it is to deny that it has its own strange and fatal beauty, a power, which can call out in men resources of endurance, courage and self-sacrifice that peacetime, to our sorrow and loss, can rarely command."
Author: Bernard Knox

3. "In questioning initially whether I am a great investor, I open the door to question whether other similarly esteemed public icons like Bill Miller are as well. It seems, perhaps, that the longer and longer you keep at it in this business the more and more time you have to expose your Achilles heel - wherever and whatever that might be."
Author: Bill Gross

4. "There is a coldness to the Clave, it is true. We are dust and shadows. But you are like the heroes of ancient times, like Achilles and Jason.""Achilles was murdered with a poisonedarrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes; the Angel knows why anyone would want to be one."
Author: Cassandra Clare

5. "More than a hygenic method of disposing of the dead, cremation enabled lovers and comrades to be mingled together for eternity:The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus; All Urnes contained not single ashes; Without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living Unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections concieved some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lye Urne by Urne, and touch but in their names."
Author: Catharine Arnold

6. "No, I'm afraid your overconfidence, as with most young men who dream of becoming successful, can quite quickly become the Achilles' heel of your continued mediocrity"
Author: Chris Murray

7. "To use the term 'clerk' as an insult is simply a banal vulgarity; Pessoa and Svevo, however would have welcomed it as a just attribute of the poet. The latter does not resemble Achilles or Diomedes, ranting on their war-chariots, but is more like Ulysses, who knows that he is no one. He manifests himself in this revelation of impersonality that conceals him in the prolixity of things, as travelling erases the traveller in the confused murmur of the street."
Author: Claudio Magris

8. "Achilles pauses, looks over his shoulder at the masses of men behind him, turns back, looks past Zeus toward Olympos and the masses of gods in front of him, and then crooks his neck to look up again at towering Zeus."Surrender now", says Achilles, "and we'll spare your goddesses' lives so they can be our slaves and courtesans."
Author: Dan Simmons

9. "Nor would I even begin to try to describe what she looks like as she's telling the story, reliving it, she's naked, hair spilling all down her back, sitting meditatively cross-legged amid the wrecked bedding and smoking ultralight Merits from which she keeps removing the filters because she claims they're full of additives and unsafe—unsafe as she's sitting there chain-smoking, which was so patently irrational that I couldn't even bring—yes and some kind of blister on her Achilles tendon, from the sandals, leaning with her upper body to follow the oscillation of the fan so she's moving in and out of a wash of moon from the window whose angle of incidence itself alters as the moon moves up and across the window—all I can tell you is she was lovely. The bottoms of her feet dirty, almost black. The moon so full it looks engorged."
Author: David Foster Wallace

10. "Enjoy your little run because there's no way you get off this boat without her trying to slice your Achilles in half."
Author: Elle Lothlorien

11. "At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and took a few minutes with each of them: ageratum, coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia. The yarrow, he said, had rose-red flowers on two-foot stems. Achillea millefolium, the plant Achilles used to heal wounds."
Author: Frederick Weisel

12. "If we increase r [in a logistic map] even more, we will eventually force the system into a period-8 limit cycle, then a period-16 cycle, and so on. The amount that we have to increase r to get another period doubling gets smaller and smaller for each new bifurcation. This cascade of period doublings is reminiscent of the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in that an infinite number of bifurcations (or time steps in the race) can be confined to a local region of finite size. At a very special critical value, the dynamical system will fall into what is essentially an infinite-period limit cycle. This is chaos."
Author: Gary William Flake

13. "I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark."
Author: George MacDonald Fraser

14. "But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and they thought that Achilles and Hector had come back to life. So they said.'But which is which? One dragged through the dust by the other ...The king says, 'You turn your boy out beautifully. No nobleman could do more.''I don't want him to be Achilles,' he says, 'I only want him not to be flattened."
Author: Hilary Mantel

15. "Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable"
Author: Homer

16. "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."
Author: Homer

17. "Sing, goddess, of Achilles' ruinous angerWhich brought ten thousand pains to the Achaeans,And cast the souls of many stalwart heroesTo Hades, and their bodies to the dogsAnd birds of prey."
Author: Homer

18. "Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
Author: Isaac Asimov

19. "...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..."
Author: J.D. Salinger

20. "I damaged my Achilles tendon, so I can't run."
Author: Jason Isaacs

21. "If I had to think of what I would do different in my whole career, it's that I never would have picked up a beer, bottle of vodka. That definitely changed my life. That is an Achilles' heel for me."
Author: Jayson Williams

22. "All interesting heroes have an Achilles' heel."
Author: Jo Nesbo

23. "Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't."
Author: Joe Biden

24. "Our dependence on foreign energy sources is our Achilles heel, not just in the realm of diplomacy, but in terms of our future as the world's economic leader."
Author: Judy Biggert

25. "An achilles, if it doesn't heal right, there could be a danger of not playing again."
Author: Kevin Pietersen

26. "She needs time. I'm giving it to her." "This is uncharacteristic of you, cousin," Achilles remarked. Apollo held his gaze when he replied firmly, "I'm a man falling in love. We do many things that are uncharacteristic."
Author: Kristen Ashley

27. "I ruptured my plantaris muscle. It runs through the calf and goes down the side of your achilles and stretches right to the heel."
Author: Lee Westwood

28. "Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles has asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. "Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?" "You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. H is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger in someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?"We hd been silent. We were 14 and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are 27, they still feel too hardHe is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis I cannot save them all. I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong."
Author: Madeline Miller

29. "Achilles was looking at me. "Your hair never quite lies flat, here." He touched my head, just behind my ear. "I don't think I've ever told you how I like it." My scalp prickled where his fingers had been. "You haven't," I said. "I should have." His hand drifted down to the vee at the base of my throat, drew softly across the pulse. "What about this? Have I told you what I think of this, just here?" "No," I said. "This surely then." His hand moved across the muscles of my chest; my skin warmed beneath it. "Have I told you of this?" "That you have told me." My breath caught a little as I spoke. "And what of this?" His hand lingered over my hips, drew down the line of my thigh. "Have I spoken of it?" "You have." "And this? Surely I would not have forgotten this." His cat's smile. "Tell me I did not." "You did not." "There is this too." His hand was ceaseless now. "I know I have told you of this." I closed my eyes. "Tell me again," I said."
Author: Madeline Miller

30. "There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles," Chiron said. "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?"
Author: Madeline Miller

31. "This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel."
Author: Mark Gevisser

32. "I will keep an eye on Diatribe, with her big talk and heroic gestures, to see with what force she will bring down my Achilles, when hitherto she has never managed to hit a common soldier, not even a Thersites, but she has shot her miserable self to pieces with her own weapons."
Author: Martin Luther

33. "Alexander, of whom men tell many legends, lived by his own. Achilles must have Patroklos. He might love his Briseis; but Patroklos was the friend till death. At their tombs in Troy, Alexander and Hephaistion had sacrificed together. Wound Patroklos, and Achilles will have your blood."
Author: Mary Renault

34. "Have a courage to repulse those people who dare to affront you, because everyone has an Achilles' heel. Outshine them, and let your light hit on their damned faces, INTENSELY."
Author: Maverick

35. "Homer never wondered whether, after their many hand-to-hand struggles, Achilles or Ajax still had all their teeth."
Author: Milan Kundera

36. "Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had."
Author: Orson Scott Card

37. "Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did.The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God.I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own."
Author: Orson Scott Card

38. "Do you know the rest?"Doug asked me expectantly. "What?The Achilles was a dysfuctional psychopath? Yeah I know that." "Well, yeah, everyone knows that. I mean the really cool part. About Thetis and Peleus." I shook my head, and he continued, professor-like, "Thetis was a sea mymph, and Peleus was a mortal who loved her. Only, when he went to woo her, she was a real bitch about it." "How so?" "She was a shape-shifter." I nearly dropped the book. "What?" Doug nodded. "He approached her, and she turned into all sorts of shit to scare him off - wild animals, forces of natures, monsters, whatever." "What... what'd he do?" "He held on. Grabbed her and wouldn't let go through all of those terrible transformations. No matter what she turned into, he just held on."
Author: Richelle Mead

39. "When Luke had descended into the River Styx, he would've had to focus on something important that would hold him to his mortal life. Otherwise he would've dissolved. I had seen Annabeth, and I had a feeling he had too. He had pictured that scene Hestia showed me—of himself in the good old days with Thalia and Annabeth, when he promised they would be a family. Hurting Annabeth in battle had shocked him into remembering that promise. It had allowed his mortal conscience to take over again, and defeat Kronos. His weak spot—his Achilles heel—had saved us all"
Author: Rick Riordan

40. "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."
Author: Rick Riordan

41. "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."
Author: Rick Riordan

42. "HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray."
Author: Sheri S. Tepper

43. "(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead."
Author: Sheri S. Tepper

44. "Was it possible—was it at all possible that she could come out of her most desperate choice with a man as clever as Odysseus who looked like Achilles and made love like Paris…?"
Author: Sherry Thomas

45. "This, I realized now watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, was the role of the officer: to prevent those under this command, at all stages of battle--before, during and after--from becoming "possessed." To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand. That was Dienekes' job. That was why he wore the transverse-crested helmet of an officer. His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example."
Author: Steven Pressfield

46. "You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.You will go on, and when you have prevailedYou can say: at this point many a one has failed.But what have I, but what have I, my friend,To give you, what can you receive from me?Only the friendship and the sympathyOf one about to reach her journey's end."
Author: T.S. Eliot

47. "I had made the fatal mistake of believing in his touch, as if the intelligence of his hands, our orgasms, the way he penetrated me, had affected him as much as it had affected me. Perhaps this is the catch cry of the egoist: I love, therefore I must be loved. Perhaps it is the Achilles' heel of my gender."
Author: Tobsha Learner

48. "The impulse to explain is the Achilles' heel of all genre work, and the most sophisticated artists within every genre know better than to expose their worlds to the sharp knife of intellection."
Author: Tom Bissell

49. "After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?"
Author: Umberto Eco

50. "The heel of Achilles"
Author: William Strunk Jr.

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