Quotes from The Charioteer

“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“It's not what one is, it's what one does with it.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“He kept telling me I was queer, and I didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other half anyway, and just keep together so that they can lean up against each other for support.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“In seven years, thought Laurie, every cell in one's body has been replaced, even our memories live in a new brain. That is not the face I saw, and these are not the eyes I saw with. Even our selves are not the same, but only a consequence of the selves we had then. Yet I was there and I am here; and this man, who is sometimes what I remember and sometimes a stranger I met at a party the other day, is also to himself the I who was there: his mind in its different skull has travelled back to a place his living feet never visited; and the pain he felt then he can feel again.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“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.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“He looked as if he were anxiously balancing a large handful of tact, without quite knowing where to put it down.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“He was filled with a vast sense of the momentous, of unknown mysteries. He did not know what he should demand of himself, nor did it seem to matter, for he had not chosen this music he moved to, it had chosen him.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“I wanted someone to follow, I wanted him to be brave. But he wants to be brave for me; and no one can do that.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“It had come to him that no one would ever look from these eyes but he: that among all the lives, numerous beyond imagination, in which he might have lived, he was this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Now for the first time he realized how important it had been not to admit any alternative to the hard, decent, orthodox choice which need not be regarded as a choice at all; how important not to be different.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“I should think more crimes have probably been committed by chaps with inferiority complexes trying to demonstrate their virility, than even for money.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“It can be good to be given what you want; it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this is what you wanted”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“It's only since it's been made impossible that it's been made so damn easy. It's got like prohibition, with bums and crooks making fortunes out of hooch, everyone who might have had a palate losing it, nobody caring how you hold your liquor, you've been smart enough if you get it at all. You can't make good wine in a bathtub in the cellar, you need sun and rain and fresh air, you need pride in a job you can tell the world about. Only you can live without drink if you have to, but you can't live without love.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“If you know about yourself, presumably you know about at least one other person.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“The lovers of the innocent must protect them above all from the knowledge of their own cruelty.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Encontrar a Fedro guiando a Sócrates casi al mismo sitio, quizá lo era, le había impresionado profundamente. El árbol de amplia copa, la verde ladera en que recostarse, el agua fría al pie; sólo faltaban las ofrendas votivas y el santuario. «Concededme ser hermoso por dentro ―había suplicado Sócrates― y haced que las cosas exteriores e interiores se reconcilien».”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“[...] y así les ocurre a los seguidores de los demás dioses. Cada hombre se esfuerza por honrar e imitar en su vida al dios a cuyo coro pertenecía, mientras permanece incorrupto en su primera encarnación; y en la manera que ha aprendido se muestra ante su amado y ante los demás.

Así, cada uno escoge de entre los hermosos un amor que corresponde a su índole; y entonces, como si su elegido fuera su dios, lo eleva y lo viste para la adoración [...] y esta ansia por descubrir la esencia de su propio dios en sí mismos es recompensada, pues están obligados a mirar al dios sin vacilación, y cuando la memoria lo retiene, su respiración los inspira y comparten sus atributos y su vida, en la medida en que un hombre puede participar de la divinidad. Y por estas bendiciones dan gracias al amado y lo aman todavía más [...] y llena el alma del amado [...]

Por lo tanto está enamorado, pero no sabe de quién; no sabe qué le ha sucedido, no lo entiende. Se ve en su amante como en un espejo, sin saber a quién ve. Y cuando están juntos también él se ve liberado del dolor, y cuando están separados añora como él es añorado; pues reflejada en su corazón está la imagen del amor, que es la respuesta del amor. Pero lo llama y lo considera no amor sino amistad [...]”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Reg coughed repressively.Habit had made of the standard nouns and adjectives in his own vocabulary something merely conventional,like italics or points of exclamation.He sometimes found Laurie's conversation highly obscene,and would have voiced his disapproval to anyone he had liked less.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“En él creció una tensión que se fue transformando en la rabiosa aflicción rebelde del hombre-niño que busca la fuerza de un hombre en el ruido y la furia.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Se le ocurrió que nadie sino él miraría nunca desde sus ojos, que de entre todas las vidas en que podía haber vivido, más numerosas que lo imaginable, esta era la suya, clavada en este único punto del infinito; el resto siempre sería ajeno, él sería yo.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“De súbito sintió el intenso flujo de energía que se desata cuando los instintos reprimidos son sancionados por una causa. Abajo Hamlet, arriba Antonio. «Sobre tus heridas yo profetizo».”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“―Nunca he entendido cómo llegaste tan lejos.

―Drogas. Drogado de pies a cabeza.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“―¿Lo conoces? ―dijo Reg.

―No. Me he equivocado.

―Yo diría que es un marica total.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“―¿Sabes? Mi padre no le era fiel a mi madre. A ella le sabía muy mal, pero ahora ya está bien.

―No es lo mismo en una mujer. Es su sino y la naturaleza las ha hecho para aguantarlo, pero la naturaleza del hombre es distinta.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Querida madre:

Me he enamorado. Ahora sé una cosa de mí mismo que hace años que sospechaba, si hubiera tenido la sinceridad de admitirlo. Debería sentir miedo y vergüenza, pero no es así. Puesto que no veo esperanza terrena alguna para esta relación, debería estar muy deprimido, pero no lo estoy. Ahora sé por qué nací, por qué me ha ocurrido todo lo que me ha ocurrido, por qué soy un tullido, porque ello me ha traído al lugar oportuno en el momento oportuno. De ser necesario volvería a pasarlo todo ahora que sé que era para esto.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Sintió ese tipo de falsa resignación que puede engañarnos cuando contemplamos los contratiempos en un momento en el que no los experimentamos.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“―Siempre me ha parecido que una de las preguntas más absurdas del mundo es: «¿Estás salvado?». Para contestar uno ha de sonar o bien esquivo y derrotista o demasiado complaciente.

―Creo que yo dije que solo puede esperarse lo mejor, pero a ella le pareció evasivo.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“Uno no teme una conversación simplemente por el miedo a que se vuelva intensa. Pero la intensidad puede constituir un poderoso disolvente de superficies protectoras finas y frágiles.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

“―Quiero decir que la legitimidad de una cosa no viene determinada por la cantidad de valor que exige. Debió de requerir mucho valor asesinar a Abraham Lincoln, por ejemplo.

―Muy cierto. Yo diría que probablemente han sido más los individuos con complejos de inferioridad que han cometido delitos para demostrar su virilidad que incluso los que lo han hecho por dinero.”
― Mary Renault, quote from The Charioteer

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Popular quotes

“She took a puff, put the cigarette in the ashtray and stared at it. Without looking up, she said, But do you believe in love, Mr Evans? She rolled the cigarette end around in the ash tray. Do you? Outside, he thought, beyond this mountain and its snow, there was a world of countless millions of people. He could see them in their cities, in the heat and the light. And he could see this house, so remote and isolated, so far away, and he had a feeling that it once must have seemed to her and Jack, if only for a short time, like the universe with the two of them at its centre. And for a moment he was at the King of Cornwall with Amy in the room they thought of as theirs—with the sea and the sun and the shadows, with the white paint flaking off the French doors and with their rusty lock, with the breezes late of an afternoon and of a night the sound of the waves breaking—and he remembered how that too had once seemed the centre of the universe. I don’t, she said. No, I don’t. It’s too small a word, don’t you think, Mr Evans? I have a friend in Fern Tree who teaches piano. Very musical, she is. I’m tone-deaf myself. But one day she was telling me how every room has a note. You just have to find it. She started warbling away, up and down. And suddenly one note came back to us, just bounced back off the walls and rose from the floor and filled the place with this perfect hum. This beautiful sound. Like you’ve thrown a plum and an orchard comes back at you. You wouldn’t believe it, Mr Evans. These two completely different things, a note and a room, finding each other. It sounded … right. Am I being ridiculous? Do you think that’s what we mean by love, Mr Evans? The note that comes back to you? That finds you even when you don’t want to be found? That one day you find someone, and everything they are comes back to you in a strange way that hums? That fits. That’s beautiful. I’m not explaining myself at all well, am I? she said. I’m not very good with words. But that’s what we were. Jack and me. We didn’t really know each other. I’m not sure if I liked everything about him. I suppose some things about me annoyed him. But I was that room and he was that note and now he’s gone. And everything is silent.”
― Richard Flanagan, quote from The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“People made her tired. The way they were easy with one another, the way they seemed so natural, only made her sad.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant

“What were you asleep? Helen would say as I opened the door. "I've been up since five." In her hand would be aluminum tray covered with foil, either that or a saucepan with a lid on it.
"Well," I'd tell her, "I didn't go to bed until three."
"I didn't go to bed until three thirty."
This was how it was with her: If you got fifteen minutes of sleep, she got only ten. If you had a cold, she had the flu. If you'd dodged a bullet, she'd dodged five. Blindfolded. After my mother's funeral, I remember her greeting me with "So what? My mother died when I was half your age."
"Gosh," I said. "Thing of everything she missed."
pgs. 86-87”
― David Sedaris, quote from When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“Gliding down the bike path on a Saturday morning, you whip by somebody peddling in the opposite direction and give each other a nod. For a moment it's like "Hey, we're both doing the same thing. Let's be friends for a second.”
― Neil Pasricha, quote from The Book of Awesome

“God—who in that part of London society was of course firmly held to be an Englishman—naturally approved the spread of the language as an essential imperial device;”
― Simon Winchester, quote from The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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