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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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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Make
Change
Gives
Deadly
Would
Earth
Dead
Threatening
Time
Ideas
Seen
Folly
Life
Better
Gone
Insight
Follies
Firsts
Religion
Appear
Perpetually
First
Another
Prejudice
Foe
Giving
Ends
Deeper
Perish
Way
Form
Ancient
Prejudices

More quotes by 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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The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.
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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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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The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.
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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Christ must be rediscovered perpetually.
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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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 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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To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.
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 greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.
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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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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Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.
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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...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