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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.

— Edith Hamilton

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Beauty

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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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

Attribution

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.