Home > Work > The King Must Die (Theseus, #1)
1 " It is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting. "
― Mary Renault , The King Must Die (Theseus, #1)
2 " Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge. "
3 " A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it. "
4 " We lived in the Bull Court; a city sealed in a palace, and a life sealed in with death. Yet it is a proud city, and a strong fierce life. A man once in it is of it till he dies. So I, who have gray beginning in my beard, still say "it is", as if the Bull Court stood and I might yet go back to it. "
5 " It is grief to a man to look on mysteries he does not understand. To yield unquestioning, not to know too much; that is the wisdom of the god. "
6 " Always, in the Bull Court, our most precious trophies were the gifts of the dead. "
7 " Your people! Six boys and seven girls! You who are worthy to rule a kingdom.""Not unless I am worthy to rule them. Few or many, it's all one, once one has put oneself in the god's hand. "
8 " I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave. "
9 " For I had felt too much and reasoned too little, hearing what I was ready to hear, not what had been said. There "
10 " May the Mother curse him and all gods below, and may Night's Daughters hunt him down into the ground! And on the hand that sheds his blood let there be a blessing. "
11 " There is truth and truth,’ said the priest of Delos. ‘It is true after its kind. "
12 " The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these. "
13 " When I rode on to meet the army, I learned a thing one never forgets after: how much easier it is to move the many than the few. "
14 " I know I thought of many things: of death, and fate, and what the gods want of man; how far a man can move within his moira, or, if all is determined, what makes one strive; and whether one can be a king without a kingdom. "
15 " The man who sleeps on a warning does not deserve one. What wait till tomorrow? I will go today? "
16 " Man born of woman cannot outrun his fate. Better then not to question the Immortals, nor when they have spoken to grieve one's heart in vain. A bound is set to our knowing, and wisdom is not to search beyond it. Men are only men. "
17 " I stretched out my hand to Poseidon, but he sent no sign. He was away perhaps, shaking the earth somewhere. All about us I felt another power, dark, past man's thoughts, giver of desolation or of joy, she who can cherish or cast away but abides no question. "
18 " Fate is our master," I thought. "Yesterday a king, and today a tumbler's man. I hope my father never hears of it. "
