"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

"And bid your handmaids to do their work. But stories concern men, all men, but especially me, for mine is the power in the house."

"No man who fights with gods will live long or hear his children prattling about his knees when he returns from battle."

"The tale of Achilles' wrath, and therefore the poem, ends only once the alienated hero is able to accept loss as an inevitable element in the shared life of mortals."

"Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you."