“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”

“No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”

“Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.”

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.There will come a dawn or sunset or high noonWhen a man will take my life in battle too--flinging a spear perhapsOr whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they saythat we devise their misery. But theythemselves- in their depravity- designgrief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

“I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claimwas stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.But a man's life breath cannot come back again-no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.Mother tells me,the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,that two fates bear me on to the day of death.If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,my pride, my glory dies...true, but the life that's left me will be long,the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.”