{"author":"Mary Renault","author_id":"Mary+Renault","total_quotes":21,"quotes":[{"text":"He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["alexander","alexander-the-great","death","life","mary-renault","morning","night"],"id":13761,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"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.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["alexias","honor"],"id":15182,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"To hate excellence is to hate the gods.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["excellence"],"id":23725,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"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 to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Sokrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a city where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["alcibiades","athens","classical","democracy","fifth-century","greece","historical-fiction","philosophy","plato","socrates","sparta"],"id":27623,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"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.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["history","inspiration"],"id":38110,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths or the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["lgbt","lgbtq-community"],"id":48492,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"Is he weeping?' said the one with the softest heart.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["compassion","cry","heart","kindness","love","sadness","soft","weeping"],"id":107680,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["action","manhood","maturity"],"id":115732,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["harvest","people","see "],"id":146744,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"},{"text":"In hatred as in love  we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe  we graft into our very soul.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["forgiveness"],"id":151923,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":21,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}