Quotes & Sayings About Achilles

In the story of Thetis and Achilles, it's clear this isn't really a safe environment. She's gone down to the River Styx - the dead are being ferried across in the background. There's something in this mythology that says that if you want invulnerability, if you want immortality, you pay a price. — Eula Biss

Growth is the mantra of our society because the economy can't remain healthy without growth.Impregnable monopolies aside (and these are few), profits are both the hallmark of capitalism and its Achilles heel, for no business can permanently maintain its prices much above its costs. There is only one way in which profits can be perpetuated; a business-or an entire economy-must grow. — Robert Heilbroner

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. — Judy Biggert

Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. 'If you have to go, you know I will go with you.' We slept. — Madeline Miller

Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading. — Caroline Alexander

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. — Martin Luther

When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together. — Madeline Miller

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. — Madeline Miller

And overpowered by memory
Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again
And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house. — Homer

I know, but Jesus Kira, even Achilles had a weakness. — Tye Shirelle

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

Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other's arms. — Homer

The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again. — Madeline Miller

It will make you powerful. But it will also make you weak. Your prowess in combat will be beyond any mortal's, but your weaknesses, your failings will increase as well."
You mean I'll have a bad heel?" I said. "Couldn't I just, like, wear something besides sandals? No offense. — Rick Riordan

Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory . — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Presently, he looked at the people standing round and said, "You have leave to go."
They bowed out. When the lads behind him started to follow, he reached out and caught one by the arm, saying, "No, you stay, Hephaistion." The tall boy came back with a lightening of all his face, and stood close beside him. He said to me, "The others are the Companions of the Prince; but we two are just Hephaistion and Alexander."
"So it was" I said, smiling at them, "in the tent of Achilles".
He nodded; it was a thought he was used to. — Mary Renault

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. — Madeline Miller

My lord, it is Patroclus, he is dead, his armour taken.. Hector is to blame.' There was a chilling silence, then a sudden intake of breath. Then a cry, low rising, increasing, then torn out of him, turned out of the depth of Hades... For Achilles, the only word 'Patroclus. — Byrne Fone

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

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

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

Oh. THere goes another one. Just like Achilles. — Phil

Dick got up to Zurich on less Achilles' heels than would be required to equip a centipede, but with plenty - the illusions of eternal strength and health, and of the essential goodness of people; illusions of a nation, the lies of generations of frontier mothers who had to croon falsely, that there were no wolves outside the cabin door. — F Scott Fitzgerald

While the willingness of the ancient Greeks to sacrifice their lives for glory brings tears to my eyes, I cannot ultimately condone the choice of Achilles. — Tim O'Reilly

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

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) sees U.S. battle networks - "which rely heavily on satellites and the Internet to identify targets, coordinate attacks, guide 'smart bombs' and more" - as its "Achilles' heel. — Robert D. Kaplan

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. — Elizabeth Cook

Look north.
Achilles on the rampart by the ditch:
He lifts his face to 90; draws his breath;
And from the bottom of his heart emits
So long and loud and terrible a scream,
The icy scabs at either end of earth
Winced in their sleep; and in the heads that fought
It seemed as if, and through his voice alone,
The whole world's woe could be abandoned to the sky.

An in that instant all the fighting glassed. — Christopher Logue

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

Priam and Achilles meet in the very twilight of their lives. Their extinction is certain and there will be no reward for behaving well, and yet, in the face of implacable fate and an indifferent universe, they mutually assert the highest ideals of their humanity. — Caroline Alexander

Pattern, as he saw it, equals redundancy. In ordinary language, redundancy serves as an aid to understanding. In cryptanalysis, that same redundancy is the Achilles' heel. — James Gleick

The Achilles heel of most institutions is that they have to trade, while an individual trader is free to trade or stay out of the market when he wants. — Anonymous

That is - your friend?"
"Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved. — Madeline Miller

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. — Catharine Arnold

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. — Steven Pressfield

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 ... ? — Sherry Thomas

I began to suprise Achilles, calling out to these men as we walked through the camp. I was always gratified at how they would raise a hand in return, point to a scar that had healed over well.
After they were gone, Achilles would shake his head. 'I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me.'
I would laugh and point them out again. 'That's Sthenelus, Diomedes' charioteer. And that's Podarces, whose brother was the first to die, remember?'
'There are too many of them,' he said. 'It's simpler if they just remember me. — Madeline Miller

She wanted to believe him so much, but fear held her in its grasp more firmly than ever before. And if she made the wrong decision, she would have to live with the result for the rest of her life. That could be a long time and she'd already made one wrong choice regarding marriage and love. What if she made another? She sat there remembering the way he'd been good to her children, the way he'd made love to her that first time, soothing her fears. She remembered how he'd finally begun to teach her the shipping business, the impromptu baseball game with Philip, the picnic in her office, the trip to his family home, and all the little things that made her laugh. From the very first he'd been kind to her, while lying repeatedly regarding the business. The business seemed to be his Achilles' heel and he'd just given it to her. — Sylvia McDaniel

I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin. — Madeline Miller

The Triumph Of Achilles

In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.

Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparent, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.

What were the Greek ships on fire
compared to this loss?

In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal. — Louise Gluck

And thus Bacchus turned Phyllis into his slave. She had become the lovely slave girl, Briseis, whom Achilles took as a war prize & whom Achilles had to yield to Agamemnon, his boss. Just as Phyllis was the prize that Eros found & whom Eros had to yield to Bacchus,his boss.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

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

The second [argument about motion] is the so-called Achilles, and it amounts to this, that in a race the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
Statement of the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox in the relation of the discrete to the continuous.; perhaps the earliest example of the reductio ad absurdum method of proof. — Zeno Of Elea

As soon as I had seen her, I was lost. For Beauty's wound is sharper than any weapon's, and it runs through the eyes down to the soul. It is through the eye that love's wound passes, and I now became a prey to a host of emotions... — Achilles Tatius

This, the only occasion in the Iliad when furious Achilles smiles serves as a bittersweet reminder of the difference real leadership could have made to the events of the Iliad. Agamemnon's panicked prize-grabbing in Book One and even Nestor's rambling "authority" pale beside Achilles' instinctive and absolute command of himself and the dangers of this occasion. — Caroline Alexander

You're a strange kind of boy," said Achilles. "I was not tested for normality before I was entrusted with this mission," said Suriyawong. "But I have no doubt that I would fail such a test. — Orson Scott Card

Sing, goddess, of Achilles' ruinous anger
Which brought ten thousand pains to the Achaeans,
And cast the souls of many stalwart heroes
To Hades, and their bodies to the dogs
And birds of prey. — Homer

Avoid greed and fear. These are the investor's Achilles heels. Keeping all your money in the bank earning 3% interest is just as foolish as dumping your entire savings into the market thinking you'll make a quick buck. — Nancy Dunnan

The arrows of love, like Achilles' sword, carry with them the remedy for the wounds they cause. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

Prince Achilles! Aristos Achaion! As — Madeline Miller

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

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. — Madeline Miller

I have stood upon Achilles' tomb
and heard Troy doubted,
Time will doubt of Rome — George Gordon Byron

Achilles absent was Achilles still! — Homer

Nastes and Amphimachus, the illustrious sons of Nomion - but Nastes, chilldish fool that he was, Went into battle decked out in gold like a girl. But gold could not help him escape a horrible death at the hands of Aeacus' grandson, the swift Achilles, In the bed of the river, and Achilles, fierce ad fiery, Took care of all his gold. — Homer

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

One of my biggest Achilles' heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very person, can remove my ego, I think there's hope for everyone. — Kanye West

Whirs. See?" Heidi grabbed the string and pulled. The snail toppled over. "No, not like that," Vanja said. "I'll show you." She placed the snail upright and slowly dragged it a few meters. "I've got a little sister!" she said aloud. Robin had gone to the window where he stood staring out into the backyard. Stella, who was energetic and presumably extra-lively since it was her party, excitedly shouted something that I didn't understand, pointed to one of the two smaller girls, who handed her the doll she was clutching, took out a little carriage, placed the doll in it, and began to push it down the hall. Achilles had found his way to Benjamin, a boy eighteen months older than Vanja, who usually sat deeply absorbed in something, a drawing or a pile of Legos or a pirate ship with plastic pirates. He was imaginative, independent, and well-behaved, — Karl Ove Knausgard

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? — Madeline Miller

So you're coming along with me, increasing our risk of being identified and allowing Achilles to get his two worst nemeses with one well-placed bomb, in order to save my life? — Orson Scott Card

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. — Dan Simmons

Ah, Lyon: the Achilles' heel of this family. She had forgotten about Lyon, and about disappearing Redmonds. — Julie Anne Long

With him died a story
That will not be retold:
How, forsaking glory,
Achilles grows old
While Hector dusts his trophies
Behind high walls-
For in his unsung strophes
Troy never falls — R.S. Gwynn

The ship's boards were still sticky with new resin. We leaned over the railing to wave our last farewell, the sun-warm wood pressed against our bellies. The sailors heaved up the anchor, square and chalky with barnacles, and loosened the sails. Then they took their seats at the oars that fringed the boat like eyelashes, waiting for the count. The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy. — Madeline Miller

Achilles' eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. I wish he had let you all die. — Madeline Miller

- so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs
and churning, whirling rims - and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms - — Homer

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

Medusa's lips split with that challenging smile, and for a second he recognized her somehow, he knew her on some primal level, the same way he'd recognized he behind the face of Brunhilde, the helmet of Achilles, or in hat ship maneuvering in space ,and then she flickered away. The simulation darkened around him. Tom pulled out his neural wire, Medusa's dangerous smile lingering in his brain. — S.J. Kincaid

On past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like. — David Bazan

Confidence in one's self is the chief nurse of magnanimity, which confidence, notwithstanding, doth not leave the care of necessary furniture for it; and therefore, of all the Grecians, Homer doth ever make Achilles the best armed. — Philip Sidney

And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again. — Madeline Miller

Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free. — Madeline Miller

Denying Ahab greatness is an aesthetic blunder: He is akin to Achilles, Odysseus, and King David in one register, and to Don Quixote, Hamlet, and the High Romantic Prometheus of Goethe and Shelley in another. Call the first mode a transcendent heroism and the second the persistence of vision. Both ways are antithetical to nature and protest against our mortality. The epic hero will never submit or yield. — Harold Bloom

Oliver couldn't walk away. Not when the wallflower needed rescuing. His goddamn Achilles heel, no matter how disastrous the outcome tended to be. He just wished his heroics would work out for once.
He kept his eyes trained on the pretty black-haired American, every muscle tensed for action. An eternity ticked by. No one approached her. She had no one to dance with, to talk to. She looked... lost. Hauntingly lonely. Frightened and defiant all at the same time.
'Twould be better for them both if he turned around right now. Never met her eye. Never exchanged a single word. Left her to her fate and him to his.
It was already too late. — Erica Ridley

Levi kicked her chair. "Cath. Read me your fan fiction. I want to know what happens next."
She opened her computer slowly, as if she were still thinking about it. As if there were any way she was going to say no. Levi wanted to know what happened next. That question was Cath's Achilles' heel. — Rainbow Rowell

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. — George MacDonald Fraser

The wrists, the Achilles' tendons, and the neck are some of the weakest points of the human body, so a lot of people have phobias about those things. I can't deal with the undersides of wrists. — Kristin Gore

Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. — C.S. Lewis

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

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--
'[kisses her]'
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour! — Christopher Marlowe

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

Of this trinity of classic heroes - Ulysses, Aeneas, and Achilles - Ulysses is the least obnoxious. — William A. Quayle

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. ACHILLES, it reads. And beside it, PATROCLUS.
"Go," she says. "He waits for you. — Madeline Miller

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. — Madeline Miller

When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light. — Madeline Miller

Greek mythology has always been my Achilles elbow. — Adrian McKinty

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

I damaged my Achilles tendon, so I can't run. — Jason Isaacs

Alexander received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude. — Philip Sidney

Dr. Timothy Shutt, in the context of the Illiad, explains the larger meaning of armor in Greek culture. It is the visible reputation of the warrior -- his gravitas, his wake. This allows another warrior to go out and win victories in the armor of Achilles. — Timothy B. Shutt

Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today. — Stan Lee

Poke had never shared out so many raisins, because she had never had so many to share. But the little kids wouldn't understand that. They'd think, Poke gave us garbage, and Achilles gave us raisins. That's because they were stupid. — Orson Scott Card

We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides. — Adam Nicolson

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

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

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

India experienced the traditional state-building process in reverse order: unlike Europe, for instance, India instituted full democracy and then set about building a state. Much of the West did precisely the opposite. As a result, underdeveloped institutions have been the Achilles' heel of Indian democracy from the outset. — Milan Vaishnav

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. — Ben Bova

Anybody who severs their own Achilles tendon, takes blood thinners to induce a hospital stay , or beats themselves with their fists hurts themselves as much, if not more, than they benefit from the attention they derive from their actions. Con artists usually benefit from misleading others without sacrificing anything themselves. All my girls have sacrificed plenty. — Janice Erlbaum