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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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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Something
Unique
Translations
Never
Exist
Efforts
Incommunicable
Unless
Cease
Translator
Effort
Library
Surpassed
Beauty
Communicate
Conducive
Language
Lovers
Translators
Book
Humility
Inquisitive
Trying
Except
Libraries

More quotes by Edith Hamilton

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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.
Edith Hamilton
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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
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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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To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.
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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Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.
Edith Hamilton
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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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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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Christ must be rediscovered perpetually.
Edith Hamilton
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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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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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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.
Edith Hamilton
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Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton
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A tendency to exaggeration was a Roman trait.
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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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.
Edith Hamilton
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Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
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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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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The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.
Edith Hamilton