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All men seek esteem the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

Mary Renault

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Mary Renault
Age: 78 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 4
Died: 1983
Died: December 13
Biographer
Novelist
Nurse
Writer
London
England
Eileen Mary Challans
Easier
Rest
Others
Best
Hard
Shoving
Much
Lifting
Men
Esteem
Seek

More quotes by Mary Renault

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There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.
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Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle.
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An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.
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In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
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Tell a man what he may not sing and he is still half free even all free, if he never wanted to sing it. But tell him what he must sing, take up his time with it so that his true voice cannot sound even in secret -- there, I have seen is slavery.
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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.
Mary Renault
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You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.
Mary Renault
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A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.
Mary Renault
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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.
Mary Renault
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We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.
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When we serve the great, they are our destiny.
Mary Renault
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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.
Mary Renault
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Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
Mary Renault
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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.
Mary Renault
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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.
Mary Renault
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But it is not for the perfect vase or the polished gem to choose their owners.
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Everything is change and you cannot step twice into the same river.
Mary Renault
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All tragedies deal with fated meetings how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing there is death, or triumph there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy - and that is as well, for one could not bear it - whose grief is that the principals never met.
Mary Renault
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I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave.
Mary Renault
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Money buys many things... The best of which is freedom.
Mary Renault