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
forever might would-be
One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
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...
horse fall grief
Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces.
determined amount
The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.
rivers steps greek-philosophy
Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.
fate dark dark-places
Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
life hatred soul
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
beautiful fashion men
Each man in his life honors, and imitates as well as he can, that god to whose choir he belonged, while he is uncorrupted in his first incarnation here; and in the fashion he has thus learned, he bears himself to his beloved as well as to the rest. So, then, each chooses from among the beautiful a love conforming to his kind, and then, as if his chosen were his god, he sets him up and robes him for worship.
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.
destiny our-destiny
When we serve the great, they are our destiny.
love heart shining
By her shining and her power he knew her.
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 ...