Quotes by Edith Hamilton

Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three

The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.

Though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little.

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

The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.

The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side.

A man without fear cannot be a slave.

It may seem odd to say that the men who made the myths disliked the irrational and had a love for facts; but it is true, no matter how wildly fantastic some of the stories are...

We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands.

Besides Zeus on his throne, Justice has her seat.

Liberty depends on self-restraint. Freedom is freedom only when controlled and limited.

Tragedy cannot take place around a type. Suffering is the most individualizing thing on earth.

Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades challenged him to drink two quarts of wine, could have done so or not as he chose, but the diners-out of Horaces day had no such freedom. He speaks often of the master of the drinking, who was always appointed to dictate how much each man was to drink. Very many unseemly dinner parties must have paved the way for that regulation. A Roman in his cups wouldve been hard to handle, surly, quarrelsome, dangerous. No doubt there had been banquets without number which had ended in fights, broken furniture, injuries, deaths. Pass a law then, the invariable Roman remedy, to keep drunkenness within bounds. Of course it worked both ways: everybody was obliged to empty the same number of glasses and the temperate man had to drink a great deal more than he wanted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such results come to pass. Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature, will have only one result that can be foretold with certainty: it will press hardest on the best.

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.

A magical universe was so terrifying because it was so irrational. There was no cause and effect anywhere.

They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)

When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith.

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.

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.