WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war? - Mary Renault

It was his nature to believe anything, before he would believe he could be wrong.

He had to do them, to show he was the best.

Nothing will change, Alexias. No, that is false; there is change whenever there is life, and already we are not the two who met in Taureas' palaestra. But what kind of fool would plant an apple-slip, to cut it down at the season when the fruit is setting? Flowers you can get every year, but only with time the tree that shades your doorway and grows into the house with each year's sun and rain.