157 Quotes by Mary Renault

It gives me no joy to be praised at the expense of a better artist, by someone who does not know the difference or who thinks me too vain to be aware of it myself.

An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.

Do not believe that others will die, not you.... I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.

True friends share everything, except the past before they met.

In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men.

It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.

It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies

The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King. And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.