The Last of the Wine
Mary Renault
Top 10 Best Quotes
“I saw death come for you, and I had no philosophy.”
“Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.”
“What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad.”
“Nothing will change, Alexias. No, that is false; there is change whenever there is life, and already we are not the two who met in Taureas' palaestra. But what kind of fool would plant an apple-slip, to cut it down at the season when the fruit is setting? Flowers you can get every year, but only with time the tree that shades your doorway and grows into the house with each year's sun and rain.”
“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.”
“We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.”
“WITHOUT LAUGHTER, WHAT MAN of sense could endure either politics or war?”
“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.”
“Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces.”
“His mouth felt cold to mine ; he neither opened his eyes, nor spoke, nor moved. I said in my heart, "Too late I am here within your cloak, I who never of my own will would have denied you anything. Time and death and change are unforgiving, and love lost in the time of youth never returns again.”
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Book Keywords:
love, classical, lysis, alcibiades, democracy, socrates, historical-fiction, polis, seeking-truth, greece, philosophy, sparta, fifth-century, honor, antiquity, plato, classical-democracy, pericles, alexias, athens
