Can I help it that my Advent calendar had a candy corn instead of a chocolate today? 
ahem
What are you giving him a balm for? It might bite him!
Whereas you are ALWAYS high-maintenance.
This is from the Appendices to Lord of the Rings, for those who aren’t me, knorf, jayjay, QtC, What Exit?, Elendil’s Heir, well, he’s back, or Malacandra; it is uttered by one of the Dwarves after a ruinous battle with the Orcs in Moria.
ahem Keep counting. There are far more of us Tolkien geeks on SMDB than you are likely to list. 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Balm!
Google returns “Pyrrhic Victory” as the first hit for “victory at too great a cost” in 0.18 seconds, so we at the Dope are still lagging.
It even gets it with “to” instead of “too” and corrects the error to boot.
Let’s step it up a notch, kids. Even Cecil must be starting to sweat.
Howzabout this: “What’s that phrase for when you predict something based on the assumption that all other conditions stay the same?” I actually heard some dude asking this outside of business school one day. And threw out the answer to him as I walked past.
Cerberus Paribus (unless I fucked up the spelling)
Sure, but does google quote Tolkein, Monty Python, and taunt Skald the Rhymer at the same time? I think not.
I thought that was “All other things being three-headed dogs”.
A thread on “victory at great cost” and nobody has mentioned the New York Yankees yet? Boy, there aren’t a lot of sports fans in GQ.
But far from being “ruined” by winning the World Series with a $200MM+ payroll, the furnaces are merely stoked for shoveling in more megabucks.
Yeah, for the Yankees that’s just a decent ROI; for the Marlins I think they had to melt them all down and sell them for their parts. Or something.
Rage, vengeance, acid-spitting hummingbirds, yawn.
You know the drill.
Wow. According to Google, it’s: “A victory at to great a cost is called?”!
Are you sure it isn’t a Pyrrhic victory?
Yes, like the victory realized by the allies after WWI. Sort of a 1910’s style victory.
Ok, I tried, but I just don’t get it. In the context of the OP I take it this quote refers to a battle that cost more in lives than it was worth, which would make it a tiny victory in my mind. So the hands would be too BIG to hold it.
Or does it refer to a battle, the gains from which will be impossible to realize because the current victors are about to get their collective asses whupped in a retributive strike?
A balm? Who told you to use a balm?