Edith Hamilton Quotes - Page 3

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

One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead. ... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.

sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.

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)

The easy way has never in the long run commanded the allegiance of mankind.

When we speak of beauty, we're speaking of something we're more or less indifferent to.

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

All things are at odds when God sets a thinker loose on the planet

A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.

Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

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.

The comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique.

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.

There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is being educated.

In theology the conservative temper tends to formalism.

So far, we do not seem appalled at the prospect of exactly the same kind of education being applied to all the school children from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but there is an uneasiness in the air, a realization that the individual is growing less easy to find; an idea, perhaps, of what standardization might become when the units are not machines, but human beings.

A tendency to exaggeration was a Roman trait.

... clear thinking is not the characteristic which distinguishes our literature today. We are more and more caught up by the unintelligible. People like it. This argues an inability to think, or, almost as bad, a disinclination to think.

Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.

There is no better indication of what the people of any period are like than the plays they go to see.

No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.