Quote

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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Mary Renault
Age: 78 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 4
Died: 1983
Died: December 13
Biographer
Novelist
Nurse
Writer
London
England
Eileen Mary Challans
Seems
Tests
Despots
Power
Seem
Withhold
Care
Eye
Liking
Back
Show
Punish
Much
Keep
Mischief
Others
Holds
Shows
Test
True
Content
Despot

More quotes by Mary Renault

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I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave.
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The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.
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Money buys many things... The best of which is freedom.
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One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
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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.
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Clouds of black birds rose up wailing and screaming, like the thoughts of my heart.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.
Mary Renault
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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.
Mary Renault
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In all men is evil sleeping the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men.
Mary Renault
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He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for for reflected in his heart is love's image, which is love's answer. But he calls it, and believes it, not love but friendship.
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You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.
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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Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle.
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Everything is change and you cannot step twice into the same river.
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When we serve the great, they are our destiny.
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