Quote

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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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Word
Words
Fossil
Language
Fossils
Light
Symbol
Thought
Symbols
Truth
Poetry
Matter
Called
Creative

More quotes by 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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Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
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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Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
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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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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The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.
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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Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
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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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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... 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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All things are at odds when God sets a thinker loose on the planet
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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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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The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.
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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A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.
Edith Hamilton
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The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.
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