157 Quotes by Mary Renault

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

Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust.

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.

It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this is what you wanted

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

...temptation, that in itself it is nothing but an opportunity for choice; so it is rather defeatist to feel very guilty about it, as though one were half ready to commit the sin.

Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart.

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

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.