Quotes from Mary Renault

Solo hay un sobresalto peor que el totalmente inesperado, el esperado para el cual uno se ha negado a prepararse.

All'inizio andai da Socrate", disse, "per il suo metodo negativo. Mi piaceva vederlo minare alla base la sicurezza degli stolti. Ecco, pensavo, un uomo che non addomestica la verità, ma la segue anche nel deserto. Perciò lo seguii a mia volta; e Socrate mi condusse dove non avevo pensato di andare".

One exercises to be a whole man, not a creature bred like a plough-ox to do one thing.

Don't we say all helpless folk—the orphan, the stranger, the suppliant, who have nothing to bargain with and can only pray—are sacred to Zeus the Savior? The King must answer for them; he is next the god. For the serfs, the landless hirelings, the captives of the spear; even the slaves.

I stretched out my hand to Poseidon, but he sent no sign. He was away perhaps, shaking the earth somewhere. All about us I felt another power, dark, past man's thoughts, giver of desolation or of joy, she who can cherish or cast away but abides no question.

Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist. He described the degrees of friendship, up from the self-seeking to the pure, when good is willed to the friend for the friend's own sake. Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.

He was like a fine olive tree, which when its roots are checked one way will put them out another. Summer or winter, storm or calm, his soul sought justice and the end of wrong.

the tenet of the philosopher that for each man there was only one perfect friend;

Fate is our master," I thought. "Yesterday a king, and today a tumbler's man. I hope my father never hears of it.

Let the hand of discretion cover the wise mouth.

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

She looked up at the whirling effulgent cloud, and thought, I brought down the fire from heaven; I have lived with glory. A thunderbolt struck from the sky and all was gone.

We lived in the Bull Court; a city sealed in a palace, and a life sealed in with death. Yet it is a proud city, and a strong fierce life. A man once in it is of it till he dies. So I, who have gray beginning in my beard, still say "it is", as if the Bull Court stood and I might yet go back to it.

There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.

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

He was not analytical enough yet to have discovered that there are certain loves, and certain phases of love, which bring perfect happiness only in their pauses and intervals, as water grows clear when one's progress has ceased to stir it.

Always, in the Bull Court, our most precious trophies were the gifts of the dead.

If one sat up as long as an hour past bedtime, except on Christmas and birthdays, one would be ill. Laurie, who had had this explained to him many times and accepted it as incontrovertible fact, inferred from it that after three hours one would probably die.

Se preguntó por qué la gente a quien uno tenía un afecto más inocente era la que con tanta frecuencia exigía de uno el más atroz engaño.

war's such a boomerang it's impossible to guarantee anyone's protection in the long run.

La moral es la munición de la guerra. ?Moral no es más que otra palabra que se usa para todo. ¿Qué quiere decir? ¿Valentía o sanguinariedad, o no hacer preguntas indiscretas, o quiere decir lo que cada día nos dicen que quiere decir?

Your people! Six boys and seven girls! You who are worthy to rule a kingdom." "Not unless I am worthy to rule them. Few or many, it's all one, once one has put oneself in the god's hand.

With a poignancy he had never felt during the half-stupefying agony on the beach, he was beset by a terrible consciousness of the world's ever-renewed, ever-varied, never-dying pain: children and animals without hope in the present moment's eternity; the prisoners of cruel men, the cruel terribly imprisoned in themselves...

Todavía no era lo suficientemente analítico para darse cuenta de que hay ciertos amores, y ciertas fases del amor, que solo producen la felicidad perfecta en sus pausas e intervalos, igual que el agua se vuelve cristalina cuando el avance de uno deja de removerla.