you’ll get into this morbid state when you think if you want something, then you shouldn’t have it. - Mary Renault

In grief more than in joy, man longs to know that the universe turns around him.

I doubt he’d ever in his life lain down with anyone for whom he had not felt some kind of fondness. He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.

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