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AchillesHollywood generally portrays Achilles as a buff, lightly armored, full grown man. In contrary he was described in the Iliad as blonde, boyish, and having an almost effeminate visage.Troy (2004)Creative license is one thing.Troy: Fall of a City (2018)But Achilles isn’t really supposed to be a badass character, he’s more a character of cursed innocence. He’s a boy thrust into war who suffers throughout his whole life.I would also note that his armor was so concealing it is why Patroclus is mistaken for Achilles and killed.Lastly Hollywood shies away from the romantic nature of Achilles and Patroclus relationship. I consider it a shame that we can’t be faithful to these ancient stories.Yes, Achilles is gay.Chiron and the Education of Achilles - Pompeo Batoni, 1746

Well, simply put - Bruce Lee never said or wrote that. Benjamin Franklin did, in the 1746 edition of his Poor Richard’s Almanack. The exact quote is “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.” The meaning of this quote is to encourage the reader to value and maximize the finite amount of time they are allotted in this lifetime.

It’s never been international in the same way English now is. It was international in Europe. People in Singapore or Iran did not bother learning it. Meanwhile, in Europe, you had non-French rulers that wrote to each other in French. It was common.(Letter of the Emperor Peter III of Russia to his own wife… in French !)It’s written :Je vous prie de ne point vous incom-oder cette nuit de dormir avec moicar il n’est plus temps de me tromper,le lit a eté trop etroit apres deuxsemaines de separation de vousaujourd’hui apres midiVotre tres infortunémari qui vous nedaigner jamais dece nomPeter(The orthography is a little different because it’s from 1746.)(If you don’t understand everything, me neither.)It means:“Do not disturb yourself by sleeping with me because the time to cheat with me has passed. The bed has been two small after two weeks being separated.Your very unfortunate husband whom you should stop calling as such.Peter”England had structural geopolotical data that gave it a potential for world domination. It had a good system of rivers that was easy to use. It allowed it to have a centralized state much much sooner than the rest of Europe. The famous census called Doomsday book would only have been possible in England and nowhere else. Since it’s an island, it doesn’t have to worry all the time about invasions from the continent. France was surrounded by enemies : the English, the Germans, the Hasburgs of the Iberic peninsula… Since it’s an island, it had no choice but to have a good fleet, while France could not concentrate all her resources on that. With ships, you get the supremacy of trade, you can block the commercial straights and try to get a monopoly in the commercial nodes… and then foreigners learn your language for trade.France was a really terrifying power on land. You didn’t want to mess with the big blue blob. Germans were traumatized for generations of the wars Louis XIV waged to them. The English land army however was often mocked. Bismark once said that if the English invaded Germany, the German police would arrest them. However, your army is worthless if you can’t deploy it. The English could blockade the armies of her enemies. We have a song about that, Le combat de la Danaé : the heroic battle of the Danaé against an English blockade at sea in 1759… and the failure to pierce it. The blockade was impenetrable. With a monopoly of the seas, then you get the monopoly of trade. The monopoly of trade creates a linguistic monopoly. France was more like China : a continental power that had enough resources to be little dependent of her neighbours.Meanwhile Europe was talking in French, remote colonies were talking English. When the colonies would matter more to Europe… then they would be forced to convert to English. Nevertheless, the shift only really happened in the XXth century, so it took time. English was not always the automatic second language of everyone. Then, people often considered it mattered infinitely more to learn German and study in Vienna, for example.