Edith Hamilton Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.

Edith Hamilton
Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.

Edith Hamilton
The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind.

Edith Hamilton
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.

Edith Hamilton
It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows.

Edith Hamilton
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
Clear thinking is not the characteristic which distinguishes our literature today. We are more and more caught up by the unintelligible. People like it. This argues an inability to think, or, almost as bad, a disinclination to think.

Edith Hamilton
Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility.

Edith Hamilton
Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)

Edith Hamilton
He drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek and make Hell grant what Love did seek.

Edith Hamilton
Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three

Edith Hamilton
One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead.... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.

Edith Hamilton
The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.

Edith Hamilton
It's not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work.

Edith Hamilton
Reality has actually very little to do with truth; there is no necessary connection between the two.

Edith Hamilton
Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within...

Edith Hamilton
A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.

Edith Hamilton
The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.

Edith Hamilton
For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.

Edith Hamilton
Pain is the most individualizing thing on earth. It is true that it is the great common bond as well, but that realization comes only 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.

Edith Hamilton
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.

Edith Hamilton
In theology the conservative temper tends to formalism.

Edith Hamilton
Sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

Edith Hamilton
Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.

Edith Hamilton
What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing.

Edith Hamilton
Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

Edith Hamilton
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.

Edith Hamilton
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.

Edith Hamilton
The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.

Edith Hamilton
There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.

Edith Hamilton