An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.

All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke; sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing; there is death, or triumph; there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy - and that is as well, for one could not bear it - whose grief is that the principals never met.

But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant.

At the stair-foot Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not by calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed. Now, when he came down the stairs with a shut mouth and blue lines under his eyes, Hephaistion received some mute signal he understood, and fell into step beside him.

To hate excellence is to hate the gods.

It gives me no joy to be praised at the expense of a better artist, by someone who does not know the difference or who thinks me too vain to be aware of it myself.

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