Edith Hamilton > Quotes

“Love cannot live where there is no trust.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“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]”
― Edith Hamilton

“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, Mythology

“The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“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, Mythology

“...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, Mythology

“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

“None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“He drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek and make Hell grant what Love did seek. ”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Moderately wise each one should be,
Not overwise, for a wise man's heart
Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“He was there beside her; yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“One good thing, however, was there - Hope. It was the only good thing the casket had held among the many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“When conditions are such that life offers no earthly hope, somewhere somehow, men must find refuge. Then they fly from the terror without to the citadel within, which famine and pestilence and fire and sword cannot shake. What Goethe calls the inner universe, can live by its own laws, create its own security, be sufficient unto itself, when once reality is denied to the turmoil of the world without.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Kiss me yet once again, the last, long kiss, Until I draw your soul within my lips And drink down all your love.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“All things are at odds when God sets a thinker loose on the planet”
― Edith Hamilton

“A man without fear cannot be a slave.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“Egypt is a fertile valley of rich river soil, low-lying, warm, monotonous, a slow-flowing river, and beyond the limitless desert. Greece is a country of sparse fertility and keen, cold winters, all hills and mountains sharp cut in stone, where strong men must work hard to get their bread. And while Egypt submitted and suffered and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full-face to life. For somewhere among those steep stone mountains, in little sheltered valleys where the great hills were ramparts to defend, and men could have security for peace and happy living, something quite new came into the world: the joy of life found expression. Perhaps it was born there, among the shepherds pasturing their flocks where the wild flowers made a glory on the hillside; among the sailors on a sapphire sea washing enchanted islands purple in a luminous air.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“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

“Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,"Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton”
― Edith Hamilton

“The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“The modern mind is never popular in its own day. People hate being made to think.”
― Edith Hamilton

“A magical universe was so terrifying because it was so irrational. There was no cause and effect anywhere.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.”
― Edith Hamilton

“Liberty depends on self-restraint. Freedom is freedom only when controlled and limited.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“To the Greeks, the word "character" first referred to the stamp upon a coin. By extension, man was the coin, and the character trait was the stamp imprinted upon him. To them, that trait, for example bravery, was a share of something all mankind had, rather than means of distinguishing one from the whole.”
― Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

“Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.”
― Edith Hamilton