Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamiltonwas an American educator and author who was "recognized as the greatest woman Classicist." She was 62 years old when The Greek Way, her first book, was published in 1930. It was instantly successful, and is the earliest expression of her belief in "the calm lucidity of the Greek mind" and "that the great thinkers of Athens were unsurpassed in their mastery of truth and enlightenment."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 August 1867
CountryUnited States of America
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
though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.
It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.
When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith.
The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.
Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three
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.
When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.
Old ideas are continually being slain by new facts. There is nothing stable in the conclusions of the mind, and it is impossible that there ever should be unless we hold that the universe is made to the measure of the human mind, an assumption for which nothing in the past gives any warrant.
A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.
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.
Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
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.