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

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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
Nothing
Limits
Men
Choice
Choices
Law
Greece
Freedom
Established
Free
Compared
Born
Limited
Action
Mere

More quotes by Edith Hamilton

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Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.
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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It is not hard work that is dreary it is superficial work.
Edith Hamilton
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..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton
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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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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...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
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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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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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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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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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When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
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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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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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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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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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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Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three
Edith Hamilton