Quotes from Edith Hamilton

The same was true of two personified emotions esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer and Hesiod: NEMESIS, usually translated as Righteous Anger, and AIDOS, a difficult word to translate, but in common use among the Greeks. It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunate—not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is not deserved.

In theology the conservative temper tends to formalism.

To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.

A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.

Civilization...is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the thins of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables, are things of first importance, there is the height of civilization, and, if at the same time, the power of art exists unimpaired, human life has reached a level seldom attained and very seldom surpassed.

He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.

The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things have their beginnings but the seed never explains the flower.

The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought. The Greek said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.

Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.

To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is being educated.

Love cannot live where there is no trust.

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." [ Saturday Evening Post , September 27, 1958]

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)

The mind knows only what lies near the heart.

The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.

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)

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.

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.

None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.

He drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek and make Hell grant what Love did seek.

Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)