Best 69 quotes in «achilles quotes» category

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew.

The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.

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

Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

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?

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

There comes a point where certain things are becoming my Achilles heel; you know when you start repeating yourself and saying the same anecdotes over and over again you start slowly hating yourself.

To reveal imprudently the spot where we are most sensitive and vulnerable is to invite a blow. The demigod Achilles admitted no one to his confidence.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

You know, you can't see or touch and isn't embodied. But they were all fallible, the Gods. And they would kind of rise and fall. You know, they all, like Achilles, Icarus, you know, they all had their high points and their low points.

As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.

...all the grace I saw then was his own: simple, unadorned, glorious.

Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.

Because you made me feel, Flick. Everyone is so predictable, but you? You showed up and rocked my world.

Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation." "What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?" "An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "And the loan of a knife." Achilles held up the bloody thing, dangling it from the point. "Yours?" he asked. "Unless you want to clean it," said Suriyawong. Achillese handed it to him. Suriyawong took out his cleaning kit and wiped down the blade, then began to polish it. "You wanted me to die," said Achilles quietly. "I expected you to solve your own problems," said Suriyawong.

Briseis blinked, shaking her head in disbelief. 'You have taken everything from me. My husband. My brothers. My father. You have given me no word of my mother. There is nowhere else for me to go.' 'I expect too much,' he stated. 'Their faces fade from my memory,' Briseis said, quietly. 'Without them, I have nothing.

For Achilles, the death of Patroclus pushed him into a fury, but it was not only grief that drove him. It was also a sense of shame and guilt because he had not been there to protect his friend. Sometimes men in combat feel this sort of survivor’s guilt even though, realistically, they could have done nothing to prevent their comrade’s death.

He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.

He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight.

He must lay siege against Briseis' walls and conquer her. Love would be his sword and he would break all her chains.

I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S. "Go," she says. "He waits for you." In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.

I could not burn your mortality from your body, so live before your days are gone and regret fills your heart.

He stands apart with Patroclus, his beloved through all eternity, and Patroclus - who loves Achilles but not as much as he is loved - waits for Achilles to move. His deference to Achilles is different from that of others, They honour and respect him, keep a wise distance, because Achilles was better than the rest. Better at being human. Fighting, singing, speaking, raging (oh, he is good at that still). Killing. But Patroclus alone is humbled by Achilles' love. Only a fool thinks that to be more loved than loving gives you power. Only a fool vaunts it and displays his own littleness by bragging to his friends and making capricious demands of his lover. Patroclus isn't a fool. He knows that he is less than Achilles even in this. Humbled by the intensity of Achilles' love he loves him back with all his large, though lesser, heart.

I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms. The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

In Homers Ilias scheint Thetis jedenfalls keine Einwände gegen die Beziehung ihres Sohnes Achilles zu Patrokles gehabt zu haben. Und Königin Olympias von Makedonien (eine der mächtigsten Frauen der Antike, die angeblich ihren Mann ermorden ließ) hatte offenbar nichts dagegen, als ihr Sohn Alexander der Große seinen Geliebten Hephaestion zum Essen nach Hause brachte.

Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.

In the end it was only Peter who had something he could say from the heart. "Am I the only one here who sees something of himself in the man who's lying inside this box?" No one had an answer for him, either yes or no.

- 'I've never had a thing for homicidal charmers before.' - 'But now you do?' - 'Apparently.' -I muttered, knowing he could feel my raicing heartbeat under his chest. - 'Well, if it helps, I've never had a thing for beautiful, deceptively brave, innocent charmers before.' - 'And now you do?' His grin widened, taking on a wolfish look. - 'Definitely

I think: this is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: how long do we have?

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different.

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.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o'er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object.

My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered... A small ugly boy born to be a king... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefits. Here is the Achilles’ heel of armies, police and bureaucracies.

Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.

Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.

Peleus acknowledged this. "Yet other boys will be envious that you have chosen such a one. What will you tell them?" "I will tell them nothing." The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. "It is not for them to say what I will do.

The same touchy sense of personal honor that is at the root of Achilles' wrath still governs relations between man and man in modern Greece; Greek society still fosters in the individual a fierce sense of his privileges, no matter how small, of his rights, no matter how confined, of his personal worth, no matter how low. And to defend it, he will stop, like Achilles, at nothing.

The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine.

The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.

This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.

This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all.

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.

We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.

We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.

well A of all youre being condecending. what did I say? it wasn't what you said it was HOW you said it and B of all I quit war forever so that's when I'm coming back when I un-forever quit war, which is never, so never