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
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.
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.
The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind.
..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,"Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton
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.
The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction.
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.
To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful ... was a mark of the Greek spirit...
To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is being educated.
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.
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)
Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.