Edith Hamilton Quotes

He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, aone with her outraged love and her ruined life.

Love and the Soul (for that is what Psyche means) had sought and, after sore trials, found each other; and that union could never be broken. (Cupid and Psyche)

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.

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.

Convention, so often a mask for injustice.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands.

It is not hard work that is dreary it is superficial work

Besides Zeus on his throne, Justice has her seat.

Liberty depends on self-restraint. Freedom is freedom only when controlled and limited.

Tragedy cannot take place around a type. Suffering is the most individualizing thing on earth.

A magical universe was so terrifying because it was so irrational. There was no cause and effect anywhere.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.

Noble self-restraint must have something to restrain.

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.

A man without fear cannot be a slave.

The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side.

Very few great artists feel the giant agony of the world.

Euripides "questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men.

The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.

She was brave from excess of grief

Though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little.