Mary Renault Quotes

It is the mark of little men to like only what they know; one step beyond, and they
feel the black cold of chaos.

I wanted someone to follow, I wanted him to be brave. But he wants to be brave for me; and no one can do that.

Clouds of black birds rose up wailing and screaming, like the thoughts of my heart.

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

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

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

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.

Great anguish lies in wait for those who long too greatly.

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

After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths or the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb.

Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces.

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

Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust.

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.

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