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
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.
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.
Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)
When the world is storm-driven and bad things happen, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.
The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.
Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.
Freedom was born in Greece because there men limited their own freedom. ... The limits to action established by law were a mere nothing compared to the limits established by a man's free choice.
Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.
In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.
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.
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.
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)