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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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Edith Hamilton
Age: 95 †
Born: 1867
Born: August 12
Died: 1963
Died: May 31
Author
Classical Scholar
Historian
Mythographer
Teacher
Writer
Elbflorenz
Hamilton
Edith
People
Caught
Disinclination
Almost
Unintelligible
Literature
Argues
Clear
Distinguishes
Today
Characteristic
Think
Inability
Thinking
Characteristics
Like
Arguing

More quotes by 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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Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
Edith Hamilton
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Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.
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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Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.
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 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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Christ must be rediscovered perpetually.
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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The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.
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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The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.
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
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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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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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The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.
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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A tendency to exaggeration was a Roman trait.
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