People who have earned no pride in themselves, are content to be proud of their cities through other men. - Mary Renault

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

It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this is what you wanted

They say women forget the pain of childbirth. Well, they are in nature's hand. No hand took mine. I was a body of pain in an earth and sky of darkness. It will take death to make me forget.