Edith Hamilton Quotations

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.

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.

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

The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things ... have their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.

A tendency to exaggeration was a Roman trait.

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.

The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

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.