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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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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Spirit
Place
Firsts
Westerners
First
Greeks
World
Greek
Discovery
West
Modern

More quotes by Edith Hamilton

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Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
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When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
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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.
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Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.
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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.
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Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
Edith Hamilton
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Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.
Edith Hamilton
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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.
Edith Hamilton
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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)
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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The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.
Edith Hamilton
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Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton
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The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
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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Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
Edith Hamilton
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It is not hard work that is dreary it is superficial work.
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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He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, aone with her outraged love and her ruined life.
Edith Hamilton
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The comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique.
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