Mary Renault
Mary Renault
Mary Renault, born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 September 1905
Mary Renault quotes about
truth men half
Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.
kings heirs slave
I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave.
longing aspiration all-things
Longing performs all things
drunk matter firsts
We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.
eye blue games
At the stair-foot Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not by calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed. Now, when he came down the stairs with a shut mouth and blue lines under his eyes, Hephaistion received some mute signal he understood, and fell into step beside him.
kings lord found
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.
unexpected kind shock
There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.
war enemy late
It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies
true-friend past share
True friends share everything, except the past before they met.
hands silence sitting
An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.
grief fate play
All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke; sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing; there is death, or triumph; there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy - and that is as well, for one could not bear it - whose grief is that the principals never met.
horse heart love-is
Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle.
life
death was the price of life.
hatred excellence desire
What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?