30 Quotes by Andrew Levkoff

We often find ourselves at ease with that with which we are most familiar, regardless of whether or not the trait serves us well in the end. Is that not yet another example of how we enslave ourselves?

I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.

He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay beyond.

There is no such thing as unrequited love; the phrase ought to be stricken from the lexicon. Love is a thing shared, an intertwining of essential separateness into something not quite alone. There is nothing like it under the heavens. Like bread, it will not be made with flour or water alone; the recipe requires both. Guarding each other’s vulnerability provides the yeast that makes it rise, and salt from the tears that caring brings lends the finishing touch.

Oh, I take your meaning now, Marcus,” he said, as if comprehension had just dawned. “You would have me harken back to a time when the outcome of a contest was not known until after the voting. How nostalgic.

When I asked him how this cramping might affect his sword arm, he assured me it was only the narrow grip of the writing instruments that troubled him. “If we fought with pens,” he said, “I would be forced to fall upon mine.

Illicit sex, Marcus, drives at least half the decisions of the modern world, wouldn’t you agree?

We would soon be on our way to war, where mercy is unwise and kindness has no place.

You Romans wash too much to be true men. Washing is for women, to clean our breeches and our vests. And even they barely let their toes touch the stream! Hah!