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None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

— 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)

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)

All Edith Hamilton quotes →

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

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.