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 sho… - Mary Renault

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

Laurie stood casting his long shadow on the room behind him, silent in a grief and wonder too deep for tears, that life was so divided and irreconcilable, and the good so implacably the enemy of the best.

You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.