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
despair oneself
There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods.
truth men half
Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.
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.
hands silence sitting
An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.
believe men forever
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-friend past share
True friends share everything, except the past before they met.
men blood together
Alexander, of whom men tell many legends, lived by his own. Achilles must have Patroklos. He might love his Briseis; but Patroklos was the friend till death. At their tombs in Troy, Alexander and Hephaistion had sacrificed together. Wound Patroklos, and Achilles will have your blood.
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.
drunk matter firsts
We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.
blessing boredom missing
Miss Searle had always considered boredom an intellectual defeat.
unexpected kind shock
There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.
sleep men evil
In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men.
kings courtesans
It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.
war enemy late
It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies