157 Quotes by Mary Renault

Just lately I have been happier than I ever had the right to expect, and as one goes around the world one sees that happiness is hard to come by and seldom lasts for long.

What is honour? In Athens it is one thing, in Sparta another; and among the Medes it is something else again. But go where you will, there is no land where the dead return across the river.

Often I wished for someone to share my mind with; but their hearts were in little things, they would have thought me a dreamer, and I had to plan alone.

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 was what you wanted.

It's not what one is, it's what one does with it.

We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.

Each generation has its own dream of beauty. I have lived long enough to watch it change. Just then, he was what all sculptors were reaching after, and only the great achieved.

It is grief to a man to look on mysteries he does not understand. To yield unquestioning, not to know too much; that is the wisdom of the god.

Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge.