A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it. - Mary Renault

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

We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.

You cannot step twice into the same river, said Herakleitos. People in the past were not just like us; to pretend so is an evasion and a betrayal, turning our back on them so as to be easy among familiar things.