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
friendship evil bitter
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil before one loses him to death.
pain believe heart
He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected in his heart is love's image, which is love's answer. But he calls it, and believes it, not love but friendship...
fate dark dark-places
Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
eye care tests
Power is the test. Some, once they have it, are content to buy the show of liking, and punish those who withhold it; then you have a despot. But some keep a true eye for how they seem to others, and care about it, which holds them back from much mischief.
despair oneself
There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods.
dull speech common
Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask ...
truth men half
Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.
longing aspiration all-things
Longing performs all things
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.
unexpected kind shock
There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.
hands silence sitting
An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.
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?
humility thinking artist
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.