Mary Renault Quotes

"Speak for me, Nikeratos. Someone's soul is always listening." Someone's always is, I suppose, if one only knew. Plato never forgot it.

Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.

We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

Plato, in his opinion, had committed too much to love.

Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust.

the maxim of the famous Spartan nurses: never expose a small child to fear, let him enter confidently on boyhood.

She stood laughing in the water. Her laughter made my backbone ripple. It had neither shame nor shamelessness; she laughed alone, please with her victory over strange monstrous things.

What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad.

You may keep your ten thousand talents; I am not in want of money, I have taken enough. Why only the half of your kingdom to the Euphrates? You offer me the part in exchange for the whole. Your daughter whom you speak of, I shall marry if I choose, whether given by you or not. Your family is safe; no ransom is required of you; come here yourself and make your suit to me, you shall have them free. If you desire our friendship, you have only to ask.

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

Am I beautiful? It is for you alone. Say that you love me, for without you I cannot live.

So I came back to philosophy, but differently; feeling it in myself, and in those I met in talk, a fever of the blood. I had come to it as a boy from wonder at the visible world; to know the causes of things; and to feel the sinews of my mind, as one feels one’s muscles in the palaestra. But now we searched the nature of the universe, and our own souls, more like physicians in time of sickness.

It was not that we were in love with the past. We were of an age to feel the present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us. In painting and sculpture and verse, the names we grew passionate over looked to us as big as those of Perikles’ day, and it still half surprises me when I find them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy good work, as one stands before a fine view or a flower, in simple gladness that it is. As we hailed each new artist we grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had caught out; we hastened, though we knew not where. To freedom, we said; the sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the Golden Number of Pythagoras, as Pheidias and Polykleitos did; and art would do great things, we said, now it had cast off its chains.

I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King.
And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.

Encontrar a Fedro guiando a Sócrates casi al mismo sitio, quizá lo era, le había impresionado profundamente. El árbol de amplia copa, la verde ladera en que recostarse, el agua fría al pie; sólo faltaban las ofrendas votivas y el santuario. «Concededme ser hermoso por dentro — había suplicado Sócrates — y haced que las cosas exteriores e interiores se reconcilien».

I should think more crimes have probably been committed by chaps with inferiority complexes trying to demonstrate their virility, than even for money.