"There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare."
- Mary Renault
"It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that."
"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."
"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."
"Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart."
"It is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting."
"Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge."
"In grief more than in joy, man longs to know that the universe turns around him."
"People like me are blamed for curiosity; having lost part of our lives, we are apt to fill the gap from the lives of others. In this I am like the rest, and make no pretences."
"Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust."