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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.

Edith Hamilton

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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Great
Early
Really
Answers
Men
Turn
Greeks
Came
Greece
Turns
Immortality
Found
Greek
Today
Acts
Soul
Believed

More quotes by Edith Hamilton

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To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.
Edith Hamilton
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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.
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Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.
Edith Hamilton
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The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.
Edith Hamilton
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... 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
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There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.
Edith Hamilton
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The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.
Edith Hamilton
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There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.
Edith Hamilton
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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
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All things are at odds when God sets a thinker loose on the planet
Edith Hamilton
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Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)
Edith Hamilton
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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
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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
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..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton
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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)
Edith Hamilton
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Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
Edith Hamilton
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...a chasm opened in the earth and out of it coal-black horses sprang, drawing a chariot and driven by one who had a look of dark splendor, majestic and beautiful and terrible. He caught her to him and held her close. The next moment she was being borne away from the radiance of earth in springtime to the world of the dead by the king who rules it.
Edith Hamilton
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Reality has actually very little to do with truth there is no necessary connection between the two.
Edith Hamilton
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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.
Edith Hamilton
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Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton