The Persian Boy

One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.

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.

I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King. And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.

To hate excellence is to hate the gods.

We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.

Alexander, of whom men tell many legends, lived by his own. Achilles must have Patroklos. He might love his Briseis; but Patroklos was the friend till death. At their tombs in Troy, Alexander and Hephaistion had sacrificed together. Wound Patroklos, and Achilles will have your blood.

It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.

Never mind, mother, you weren’t far out; he is Alexander too.

That there are fashions in admiration and denigration is inevitable; they should not however be followed at the expense of truth.

I doubt he’d ever in his life lain down with anyone for whom he had not felt some kind of fondness. He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.

Great anguish lies in wait for those who long too greatly.

People like me are blamed for curiosity; having lost part of our lives, we are apt to fill the gap from the lives of others. In this I am like the rest, and make no pretences.

When we were up in the hills, he took me for an early ride, to taste, as he said, the clean air of Persia once again. I breathed it and said, “Al’skander, we are home.” “Truly. I too.” He looked towards the folded ranges, whose peaks had had the first snowfalls. “I’d say this only to you; shut it in your heart. Macedon was my father’s country. This is mine.

Am I beautiful? It is for you alone. Say that you love me, for without you I cannot live.

I said, 'We have dreamed, dear friend. Another time, we might awaken. Let it be a dream forgotten at morning.' That seemed a better way of saying it than, 'Never remind me of this, for fear I should stick a knife in you.

If anyone has the right to be measured by the standards of his own time, it is Alexander. Hermann Bengston, The Greeks and the Persians

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. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.

Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart.

Do I grudge my lord the herb that will heal him, because another gathers it? No, let him be healed.

All these years you have made a boy of him. But with me, he shall be a man

They say women forget the pain of childbirth. Well, they are in nature's hand. No hand took mine. I was a body of pain in an earth and sky of darkness. It will take death to make me forget.