Mary Renault

“In grief more than in joy, man longs to know that the universe turns around him.”

“It is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting.”

“People like me are blamed for curiosity; having lost part of our lives, we are apt to fill the gap from the lives of others. In this I am like the rest, and make no pretences.”

“Miss Searle had always considered boredom an intellectual defeat.”

“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.”

“In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”

“Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust.”

“A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.”

“It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this is what you wanted”

“Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart.”

“There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.”

“Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.”

“It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.”

“Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge.”

“How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?”

“Money buys many things... The best of which is freedom.”

“Each generation has its own dream of beauty. I have lived long enough to watch it change. Just then, he was what all sculptors were reaching after, and only the great achieved.”

“You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.”

“Often I wished for someone to share my mind with; but their hearts were in little things, they would have thought me a dreamer, and I had to plan alone.”

“It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that.”