Quotes from Margaret George

The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.

It is only when our fate hangs in the balance, when our very life depends on something, that we see whether or not we trust that the rope to which we are clinging will support us. If we do not, then we let of of the ledge and swing on it with our full weight.

Jesus saw the eternal in the everyday. Your last day on earth should be spent as you spent all your others-- doing your daily tasks with love and honesty... An ordinary day is, perhaps, the most holy of all.

It is thus that inanimate objects seem to soak up the essence of living things, and later cause pain or pleasure when we merely look at them.

One always imagines that the days that change one's life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential.

As long as the sun rose each day, as long as they could behold it, there life was secure.

Omens. If I were beginning again, starting out in life, I would ignore all omens, neither heeding them nor trying to disable them. If we chose to pass them by, then perhaps they would lose their power, as old gods and goddesses, no longer worshiped, fade away and lose their grip on us.

I embrace Fate like a lover. All my life, Fate has wished to be my lover and tried to govern me. Now I turn to submit to his embraces.

A green so pure that beside it emeralds were dirty and grass dull. The green of Egypt's fields, the fierce green of her crops under the sun, glowing under the eye of Re. Green seemed the most Egyptian of all colors: her Nile, her crocodiles, her papyrus. And Wadjyt, the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt, whose very name means "the green one.

We are more than our bodies, it is true; but we cannot be divorced from them. They are us, and the only way in which we can see one another. Perhaps the gods are above this, but in their mercy, they have given us the guise of bodies.

Our minds see things that our eyes cannot. I suppose something continues to exist until the mind that sees it no longer exists.

The soft strings of the lute rippled with memories, and the maid's lilting voice made Mary sigh as she closed her eyes. She fell asleep filled with sadness, but without regret.

My firm resolve was to escape my wicked cousin and my English captors. But the wind was howling, and rain was coming down in sheets. And even as I relaxed in a hot bath in my snug apartments, the clamor of the storm outside was counseling me to be patient and wait. A wise woman never does anything in a hurry.

Mary watched the sunset from her carriage window, realizing that such beauty could never last. Life was a golden glory that faded in the wink of an eye. Life was a village fair that only lasted for a single day. As the carriage rattled along, rocking her like a babe in arms, Mary felt very old and wise. She found that she didn't mind being taken back to the castle, to a caring captivity that was filled with comforts and kindness. And she also found that she couldn't keep her eyes open.

The war at Troy seemed to grow in song, poetry, and story all the while. As it faded from living memory, it grew larger and larger. Men claimed descent from one or the other of the heroes, or, failing that, anyone who had fought in the war, which now assumed the stature of a clash between the gods and the titans.

Snakes. How fitting. Not only are they sacred to Egypt, but associated with the power of the underworld and with fertility. Perhaps I did you a favor by refusing more conventional poisons.

Life as a whole is not happy. Only moments. This is my moment. It will pass.

I thought of the "Roman way" of impaling oneself on a sword. Certainly poison seemed more civilized. And I thought the Romans were a little too eager to commit suicide. It did not take much of a setback before they were reaching for their swords, or opening their veins.

For a man, however, it was the opposite. Alexander's beauty was not felt to detract from his generalship. Nowhere was it hinted that a handsome man could not be a good ruler, or clever, or strong, or brave. In fact, people longed for a resplendent king. But for a woman…I shook my head. It was as if beauty in a woman rendered all other traits suspect.

The age of heroes had truly passed, and Tisamenus could not be one even if he burned for it. A great bronze wall had been erected around those old heroes, it descended from the sky, and no one could lift it or trespass there. Each age bestowed its own glory, but the age of my grandson could not be the age of Menelaus.

When we are ready, the gods send what we need.

In France her tutor had once taught her that to truly fix an image in the mind to fasten it down completely so that it remained forever captive and vivid she should carefully name each aspect of the thing to herself as though she were describing it to a blind person. For ma petite such is the fickleness of the human mind that it soon lets go of whatever it sees if you would keep it you must tack it down with words. She had tried it and found that it worked on flowers rooms faces ceremonies.

To recount these histories is like unravelling a thread: one means only to tell one little part, but then another comes in, and another, for they are all part of the same garment — Tudor, Lancaster, York, Plantagenet.

No matter what they are in life, in memory they always seem to rearrange themselves in the opposite manner. All pleasures are seen as foreshortened and hasty and fleeting, and all pain lingering.