Mary Renault Quotes

The twilight struck chilly as he went outside. He experienced for the first time that special dread brought by the first touch of winter to lovers who have nowhere to meet except out of doors.

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. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.

It's not what one is, it's what one does with it.

It had come to him that no one would ever look from these eyes but he: that among all the lives, numerous beyond imagination, in which he might have lived, he was this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I.

It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.

We are weary of ourselves, and have dreamed a king. If now the gods have sent us one, let us not ask him to be more than mortal.

He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected in his heart is love's image, which is love's answer. But he calls it, and believes it, not love but friendship…

A young man sat down beside him on the divan and, without any kind of preliminary, said, ‘Is it a queer book?’
‘No,’ said Laurie.
‘Oh,’ said the young man, on a note of utter deflation. He got up and went away.

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

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

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