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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.

— Edith Hamilton The Greek Way (1930)

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More quotes by Edith Hamilton

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 Edith Hamilton quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edith Hamilton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.