22 quotes
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.
The Persian Boy (1972)
Men who hover over their opponents have no cause to evolve a science of wrestling; and Theseus is conventionally shown in combat with hulking of monstrous enemies, living by his wits.
The King Must Die (1958)
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.
The Charioteer (1953)
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
The Praise Singer (1978)
But it is not for the perfect vase or the polished gem to choose their owners.
The Persian Boy (1972)
The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.
The Charioteer (1953)
You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies.
The Bull from the Sea (1962)
When we serve the great, they are our destiny.
The Persian Boy (1972)
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.
The Persian Boy (1972)
The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes.
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Miss Searle had always considered boredom an intellectual defeat.
North Face (1948)
Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world.
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Sometimes it gets so 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.'
The Charioteer (1953)
A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.
The King Must Die (1958)
To hate excellence is to hate the gods.
The Persian Boy (1972)
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Don't you understand even seedtime and reaping? How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?
The King Must Die (1958)
Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
The Bull from the Sea (1962)
Each man in his life honors, and imitates as well as he can, that god to whose choir he belonged, while he is uncorrupted in his first incarnation here; and in the fashion he has thus learned, he bears himself to his beloved as well as to the rest. So, then, each chooses from among the beautiful a love conforming to his kind, and then, as if his chosen were his god, he sets him up and robes him for worship.
The Charioteer (1953)