Edith Hamilton
None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.Collection: Poetry
When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.Collection: Freedom
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.Collection: Faith
The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.
To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is being educated.
The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.
Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.
When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.
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.
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.
Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.Collection: Evil
To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful ... was a mark of the Greek spirit.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Life
Love cannot live where there is no trust.Collection: Trust
Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.Collection: Responsibility
Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.Collection: Men
In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.Collection: Witty
Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.Collection: Men
Civilization...is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the thins of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables, are things of first importance, there is the height of civilization, and, if at the same time, the power of art exists unimpaired, human life has reached a level seldom attained and very seldom surpassed.Collection: Love
Pain is the most individualized thing on earth. It is true that it is the great common bond as well, but that realization only comes when it is over. To suffer is to be alone. To watch another suffer is to know the barrier that shuts each of us away by himself Only individuals can suffer.Collection: Pain
Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.Collection: Results
None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.Collection: Wicked
I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.Collection: Men
It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.Collection: Hard Work
though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.Collection: Life Changing
When the world is storm-driven and bad things happen, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.Collection: Strong
When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith.Collection: Faith
The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.Collection: Fullness Of Life
The heterodoxy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next.Collection: Generations
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.Collection: Discovery
Old ideas are continually being slain by new facts. There is nothing stable in the conclusions of the mind, and it is impossible that there ever should be unless we hold that the universe is made to the measure of the human mind, an assumption for which nothing in the past gives any warrant.Collection: Past
No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.Collection: Bible
It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.Collection: Country
When I read educational articles it often seems to me that this important side of the matter, the purely personal side, is not emphasized enough; the fact that it is so much more agreeable and interesting to be an educated person than not. The sheer pleasure of being educated does not seem to be stressed.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Flower
The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view.Collection: Views
Freedom was born in Greece because there men limited their own freedom. ... The limits to action established by law were a mere nothing compared to the limits established by a man's free choice.Collection: Men
A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.Collection: Real
The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought." The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.Collection: Greek
There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.Collection: Agony
Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)Collection: Heart
Reality has actually very little to do with truth; there is no necessary connection between the two.Collection: Truth
Convention, so often a mask for injustice.Collection: Injustice
The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.Collection: Suffering
To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.Collection: Education
He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, aone with her outraged love and her ruined life.Collection: Far Away
The mind knows only what lies near the heart.Collection: Lying