Mary Renault

One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.

True friends share everything, except the past before they met.

There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.

The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.

One might have supposed that the true act of love was to lie together and talk.

A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.

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.