It is a grief to see a hero go down to the house of Hades. It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death. - Mary Renault

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

I'm not prepared to accept a standard which puts the whole of my emotional life on the plane of immorality.

"Go in peace," I said to him; "bear no ill-will to me, for Necessity yields to no man: and do not complain of me to our mother, for her blood is on your head as well as mine.
If the gods had not forbidden it, my brother, I would put you to sleep before I left you, for night comes on; this is an empty place, and the clouds look dark upon the mountains.
But the blood of kindred is not to be washed away; and when a man has once felt the breath of the Honoured Ones upon his neck, he will not bid them across the threshold. So forgive me, and suffer what must be. The clouds are heavy; if the gods love you, before morning there will be snow."

Miss Searle had always considered boredom an intellectual defeat.