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Edith Hamilton Quotes
1867–1963 United States
Edith Hamilton (August 12, 1867 – May 31, 1963) was a classicist and educator who was a writer on mythology. Her most famous books are The Greek Way (1930) and Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942).
United States Academics Authors Educators Non-fiction authors Also known as: Hamilton, Edith
Random Edith Hamilton quote
14 quotes
All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought.
The Greek Way (1930)
None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.
The Greek Way (1930)
A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people, as no historical reconstruction can.
The Roman Way (1932)
Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth, and that which enables him to die for the truth.
The Greek Way (1930)
Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
The Roman Way (1932)
All things are at odds when God lets a thinker loose on this planet.
The Greek Way (1930)
To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit, which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction.
The Greek Way (1930)
Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within...
The Greek Way (1930)
The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest, where all human things...have their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.
The Greek Way (1930)
It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.
They were the first Westerners. The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery; and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.
The Greek Way (1930)
If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.
The Echo of Greece (1957)
There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist, except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.
[Happiness is] The exercise of vital powers, along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope.
The Greek Way (1930)
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