He looked as if he were anxiously balancing a large handful of tact, without quite knowing where to put it down. - Mary Renault

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 meanest citizen; a mere vaunting soldier, though wherever he went he brought Greece with him, the Greece he honored, of which these liars are the unworthy heirs.

The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these.

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.