Quotes from Edith Hamilton

The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side.

Maidens excellent in beauty, Riding their steeds in shining armor, Solemn and deep in thought, With their white hands beckoning. -Valkyries

Euripides questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men.

Don't expect the material rewards of unrighteousness while engaged in the pursuit of truth.

According to the most modern idea, a real myth has nothing to do with religion. It is an explanation of something in nature; how, for instance, any and everything in the universe came into existence: men, animals, this or that tree or flower, the sun, the moon, the stars, storms, eruptions, earthquakes, all that is and all that happens. Thunder and lightning are caused when Zeus hurls his thunderbolt.

sea, and was killed. The sea into which he fell was called the Aegean ever after.

Noble self-restraint must have something to restrain.

The oracle has spoken. But for me, already old age is my companion

who kindled in each one the desire not to be left behind nursing a life without peril by his mother's side, but even at the price of death to drink with his comrades the peerless elixir of valor. They

To the people who told these stories all the universe was alive with the same kind of life they knew in themselves.

And remember always, "More ought to be scratched out than left.

Underneath the shifting sands of the struggle between two little Greek states [Thucydides] had caught sight of a universal truth. Throughout his book, through the endless petty engagements on sea and land which he relates with such scrupulous care, he is pointing out what war is, why it comes to pass, what it does, and, unless men learn better ways, must continue to do. His History of the Peloponnesian War is really a treatise on war, its causes and its effects.

In the Odyssey when a priest and a poet fall on their knees before Odysseus, praying him to spare their lives, the hero kills the priest without a thought, but saves the poet. Homer says that he felt awe to slay a man who had been taught his divine art by the gods. Not the priest, but the poet, had influence with heaven—and no one was ever afraid of a poet.

Besides Zeus on his throne, Justice has her seat.

You die, O thrice desired, And my desire has flown like a dream. Gone with you is the girdle of my beauty, But I myself must live who am a goddess And may not follow you. Kiss me yet once again, the last, long kiss, Until I draw your soul within my lips And drink down all your love.

Venus herself graced their marriage with her presence, but what happened after that we do not know, except that Pygmalion named the maiden Galatea, and that their son, Paphos, gave his name to Venus' favorite city.

Golden Aphrodite who stirs with love all creation, Cannot bend nor ensnare three hearts: the pure maiden Vesta, Gray-eyed Athena who cares but for war and the arts of craftsmen, Artemis, lover of woods and the wild chase over the mountain.

The truth to reconcile these truths he found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. (Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

The truth to reconcile these truths he found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: 'God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.' (Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

Mankind's chief hope of escaping the wrath of whatever divinities were then abroad lay in some magical rite, senseless but powerful, or in some offering made at the cost of pain and grief.

With the coming forward of Greece, mankind became the center of the universe, the most important thing in it. This was a revolution in thought. Human beings had counted for little heretofore. In Greece man first realized what mankind was.

She looked at him; she did not speak. He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life. His feelings had nothing in them to make him silent.

She would have given her soul to him if he had asked her. And now both were fixing their eyes on the ground, abashed, and again were throwing glances at each other, smiling with love's desire.

Seek to persuade the sea wave not to break. You will persuade me no more easily.