So now, for mercy and honor shown to my people, my lord is barbarous; a tyrant, because he punished his would-be murderers, the right of their meanes… - Mary Renault

The man who sleeps on a warning does not deserve one. What wait till tomorrow? I will go today?

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 was what you wanted.

With a cold barren weariness that quenched the dry glow of anger, he thought, What can you do about these people? The terrible thing is, there are such a lot of them. There are so many, they expect to meet each other wherever they go.

Not wicked, he thought: that’s not the word, that’s sentimentality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don’t sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he’s gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they’ll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on. …