Skip to content

Socrates, obviously unfair though he is, puts his finger on the weak spot of Greek religion as orthodoxly conceived in the fifth century B.C. Its formula is do ut des. It as, as Socrates says, a 'business transaction' and one in which, because god is greater than man, man gets on the whole the best of it.

— Jane Ellen Harrison Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion (1903)

Another quote →

More quotes by Jane Ellen Harrison

Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul.

Professional and literary London I have known, academic Cambridge I do know. That other Youth—that is, happy peasants, coal-heavers, opulent stockbrokers, and the higher form of young barbarians—I do not know, and of them I do not speak. I accept my limitations.

Alpha and omega (1915)

Women qua women may remain, for the better continuance of life, subject to men; women as human beings demand to live as well as to continue life. To live effectively they must learn to know the world through and through, in order that, while side by side with men, they may fashion life to their common good.

Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing, and atonement.

Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion (1903)

All Jane Ellen Harrison quotes →

Attribution

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