"It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this is what you wanted"
- Mary Renault
"A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it."
"There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it."
"You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future..."
"What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad."
"Men are not born equal in themselves, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you t..."
"It's only since it's been made impossible that it's been made so damn easy. It's got like prohibition, with bums and crooks making fortunes out of hooch, everyone who might have had a palate losing it..."
"He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid."
"What is honour? In Athens it is one thing, in Sparta another; and among the Medes it is something else again. But go where you will, there is no land where the dead return across the river."
"To hate excellence is to hate the gods."