Mary Renault Quotes

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…

The world had broken; the pieces lay like shattered gold, spoil for the strongest.

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

He kept telling me I was queer, and I didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other half anyway, and just keep together so that they can lean up against each other for support.

Fui felice di sfoggiare quel poco che sapevo; e poiché mi sentivo già a mio agio con lui, gli domandai perché mai un vecchio volesse frequentare la scuola. Non si risentì; rispose che per un vecchio non imparare ciò che avrebbe potuto renderlo migliore era assai più disonorevole che per i ragazzi, dato che aveva avuto tutto il tempo di comprenderne l’importanza”.

Hephaistion had known for many ages that if a god should offer him one gift in all his lifetime, he would choose this. Joy hit him like a lightning-bolt.

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

Do you know that old song about Orpheus, how he played his lyre on the mountainside, and found a lion had crouched at his feet to listen? I’m no Orpheus, I know; but sometimes I see the lion’s eyes. Where did it go, after the music, what became of it? The story doesn’t say.

The lovers of the innocent must protect them above all from the knowledge of their own cruelty.

Now for the first time he realized how important it had been not to admit any alternative to the hard, decent, orthodox choice which need not be regarded as a choice at all; how important not to be different.

...temptation, that in itself it is nothing but an opportunity for choice; so it is rather defeatist to feel very guilty about it, as though one were half ready to commit the sin.

Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it.

WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war?

In his imagination the pages were printed not with their own paragraphs only, but with all that he himself had brought to them: it seemed as though he must be identified and revealed in them, beyond all pretence of detachment, as if they were a diary to which he had committed every secret of his heart.

I doubt he’d ever in his life lain down with anyone for whom he had not felt some kind of fondness. He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.