Edith Hamilton: Quotes about the world

Edith Hamilton was American teacher and writer. Explore interesting quotes on world.

Edith Hamilton: 52 quotes0 likes

“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.”

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 1

“Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within…”

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 1

“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.”

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 1

“Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made an exception in Socrates’ case. They recognized his likeness to Christ. He was the example that a soul could be Christlike, not through grace, but by nature. Erasmus said: "Holy Socrates, pray for us." To know him is a help to knowing Christ, and it is not hard to know him. We can see him quite clearly. Plato, who drew his portrait, could not, of course, keep himself out of it, any more than Christ’s recorders could; but at least magic did not dog Plato’s footsteps, as it did everyone’s footsteps when the Gospels were written. In the fourth century B. C. Greeks had no leaning to marvels. Also in the centuries that followed no one founded a church on Socrates and built up around him a theology and hung creeds and ceremonials upon him. To see what he was, we do not have to brush anything away, except a bit of Plato. We can use him as a stepping stone to Christ, a first aid in realizing what Christ was.”

"The Rediscovery of Christ," Witness to the Truth: Christ and His Interpreters (1962)

“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.”

On the Greeks, in Ch. 1
The Greek Way (1930)