The Memoirs of Cleopatra Quotes

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I loved him so, even his past was precious to me. I found myself kissing each mark, thinking, I would have had it never happen, I would wish it away, taking him further and further back to a time when he had known no disappointments, no battles, no wounds, as I erased each one. To make him again like Caesarion. Yet if we take the past away from those we love - even to protect them - do we not steal their very selves?”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Things do not happen, we must make them happen”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“In my experience, there are two things that no one will admit to: having no sense of humor and being susceptible to flattery.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“What is one person's diversion may be another's supreme test.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Oh, he was just angry, we tell ourselves when someone blurts out something he later apologizes for. But a word, once spoken, lingers forever; to keep peace we pretend to forget, but we never do. Strange that a spoken word can have such lasting power when words carved on stone monuments vanish in spite of all our efforts to preserve them. What we would lose persists, lodged in our minds, and what we would keep is lost to water, moths, moss.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“You must bear losses like a soldier, the voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Fortune offers you opportunities to create; she does not hand you presents.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I will even not rant about treachery. I was brought up in a sea of treachery and deceit and betrayal. I swam in it like perch in the Nile. I am completely at home in it. I shall not drown.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“It is thus that inanimate objects seem to soak up the essence of living things, and later cause pain or pleasure when we merely look at them.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“It is only when our fate hangs in the balance, when our very life depends on something, that we see whether or not we trust that the rope to which we are clinging will support us. If we do not, then we let of of the ledge and swing on it with our full weight.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“A green so pure that beside it emeralds were dirty and grass dull. The green of Egypt’s fields, the fierce green of her crops under the sun, glowing under the eye of Re. Green seemed the most Egyptian of all colors: her Nile, her crocodiles, her papyrus. And Wadjyt, the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt, whose very name means “the green one.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“As long as the sun rose each day, as long as they could behold it, there life was secure.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Snakes. How fitting. Not only are they sacred to Egypt, but associated with the power of the underworld and with fertility. Perhaps I did you a favor by refusing more conventional poisons.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“We are more than our bodies, it is true; but we cannot be divorced from them. They are us, and the only way in which we can see one another. Perhaps the gods are above this, but in their mercy, they have given us the guise of bodies.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I found the sea air invigorating, and the unfamiliar smells and sounds I encountered every day fascinated me. There was, first of all, the pervading sea-salt odor, and the smell of the wind, bringing with it the faintest tang of the land it had blown over. There was the rich smell of the fresh-caught fish—so different from those sold in markets—and the musty dampness of the soaked ropes. The tar and resin found everywhere on board gave off a warm, raisinlike aroma that grew stronger as the sun rose.
As for the sounds, I loved the slap-slap-slap of the water against the hull of the ship; it lulled me to sleep. The creaking of the rigging and the whoosh of the sail as it filled and deflated was like nothing else. How ordinary the sounds of street and market were by comparison.
Water had lost its terror for me, for which I was deeply grateful. First I had ventured the harbor, then the Nile, now the open sea—I was cured of my fear, thanks be to all the gods!”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“For a man, however, it was the opposite. Alexander’s beauty was not felt to detract from his generalship. Nowhere was it hinted that a handsome man could not be a good ruler, or clever, or strong, or brave. In fact, people longed for a resplendent king. But for a woman…I shook my head. It was as if beauty in a woman rendered all other traits suspect.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I realized then how odd it must seem to them to be summoned by a woman. Roman women were at home quietly minding their business or else doing what wives were known to do in joke and song: boss, nag, forbid. As a foreign queen I was the only woman who was their equal and had the power to summon them, question them, and advise them on matters other than domestic details. I thought that a pity; there should be others.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I thought of the “Roman way” of impaling oneself on a sword. Certainly poison seemed more civilized. And I thought the Romans were a little too eager to commit suicide. It did not take much of a setback before they were reaching for their swords, or opening their veins.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“When we are ready, the gods send what we need.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“No matter what they are in life, in memory they always seem to rearrange themselves in the opposite manner. All pleasures are seen as foreshortened and hasty and fleeting, and all pain lingering.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Anyone who poisons the present with the past is a fool.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I will suffocate, drugged by elixir of roses.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Los fuertes buscarán fuerza, los débiles buscan excusas”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra