Mary Renault

I learned some, listen. Love makes one ashamed of disgrace, and hungry for what is glorious; without which neither a people nor a man can do anything great or fine. If a lover were to be found doing something unworthy of himself, or basely failing to resent dishonour, he would rather be exposed before family or friends or anyone, than before the one he loves. And somewhere it says, Suppose a state or an army could be made up only of lovers and beloved. How could any company hope for greater things than these, despising infamy and rivalling each other in honour? Even a few of them, fighting side by side, might well conquer the world.’

‘What are you thinking of?’ Hephaistion asked him.

‘Of death.’

‘It does leave people sad sometimes. It’s the vital spirits that have gone out of one. I’d not have it undone; would you?’

As the proverb tells us, war is sweet to the untried.

"Today has not run away from us, like days that are filled with nothing. They are wrong who say that only misery lengthens time."—"Yes," he said. "Yet the day is ending, and still too soon."

Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.

but let them beware of the lie in the soul. Men worship such words; and then, feeling themselves a part of what can do no wrong, swell up in hubris, thinking only how much higher they are than another set of men, not how much lower than the gods.