Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
Freedom
Established
Free
Compared
Born
Limited
Action
Mere
Nothing
Limits
Men
Choice
Choices
Law
Greece

More quotes by Edith Hamilton

Image
... 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
Image
Christ must be rediscovered perpetually.
Edith Hamilton
Image
Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three
Edith Hamilton
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.
Edith Hamilton
Image
A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.
Edith Hamilton
Image
He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, aone with her outraged love and her ruined life.
Edith Hamilton
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
Edith Hamilton
Image
Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
Edith Hamilton
Image
Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.
Edith Hamilton
Image
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
Image
The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
Edith Hamilton
Image
Reality has actually very little to do with truth there is no necessary connection between the two.
Edith Hamilton
Image
Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)
Edith Hamilton
Image
All things are at odds when God sets a thinker loose on the planet
Edith Hamilton
Image
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