The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

I was too young, my father said, to get anything solid from philosophy, which would only teach me to quibble with my elders and be wise in my own conceit.

As the proverb tells us, war is sweet to the untried.

Thus the event makes fools of our expectations.

I felt a sudden rush of the past upon me; for a moment grief pierced me like a winter night; yet it came to me like an old grief, I had suffered it long since and now it was behind me. Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.