Top 90 Edith Hamilton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Love cannot live where there is no trust.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

3. “It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is to be educated.”

— Edith Hamilton

4. “Myths are early science, the result of men’s first trying to explain what they saw around them.”

— Edith Hamilton

5. “Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.”

— Edith Hamilton

6. “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.”

— Edith Hamilton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

7. “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.”

— Edith Hamilton

8. “The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.”

— Edith Hamilton

9. “Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.”

— Edith Hamilton

10. “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.”

— Edith Hamilton

11. “Pain is the most individualized thing on earth. It is true that it is the great common bond as well, but that realization only comes when it is over. To suffer is to be alone. To watch another suffer is to know the barrier that shuts each of us away by himself Only individuals can suffer.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

13. “Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.”

— Edith Hamilton

14. “The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

16. “Our word ‘idiot’ comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.”

— Edith Hamilton

17. “There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.”

— Edith Hamilton

18. “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.”

— Edith Hamilton

19. “Kiss me yet once again, the last, long kiss, Until I draw your soul within my lips And drink down all your love.”

— Edith Hamilton

20. “The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”

— Edith Hamilton

21. “He drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek and make Hell grant what Love did seek.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

23. “A silly man lies awake all night, Thinking of many things. When the morning comes he is worn with care, And his trouble is just as it was.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

25. “Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man’s heart Is seldom glad. Cattle die and kindred die. We also die. But I know one thing that never dies, Judgment on each one dead.”

— Edith Hamilton

26. “The early Greek mythologists transformed a world full of fear into a world full of beauty.”

— Edith Hamilton

27. “It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.”

— Edith Hamilton

28. “Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

30. “I take courage,” Aeneas said. “Here too there are tears for things, and hearts are touched by the fate of all that is mortal.”

— Edith Hamilton

31. “The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly – that and only that, is tragedy.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

33. “Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.”

— Edith Hamilton

34. “Intelligence did not figure largely in anything he did and was often conspicuously absent.”

— Edith Hamilton

35. “Very different conditions of life confronted them from those we face, but it is ever to be borne in mind that though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.”

— Edith Hamilton

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

— Edith Hamilton

37. “The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, “Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.” The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.”

— Edith Hamilton

38. “The heterodoxy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next.”

— Edith Hamilton

39. “We seek the dead only, to return to earth the body, of which no man is the owner, but only for a brief moment the guest. Dust must return to dust again.”

— Edith Hamilton

40. “Not because he had complete courage based on overwhelming strength, which is merely a matter of course, but because, by his sorrow for wrongdoing ad his willingness to do anything to expiate it, he showed greatness of soul.”

— Edith Hamilton

41. “It is the men of this land who are bloodthirsty and they lay their own guilt on the gods.”

— Edith Hamilton

42. “To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.”

— Edith Hamilton

43. “If Hesiod did write it, then a humble peasant, living on a lonely farm far from cities, was the first man in Greece to wonder how everything had happened, the world, the sky, the gods, mankind, and to think out an explanation. Homer never wondered about anything.”

— Edith Hamilton

44. “It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one’s country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.”

— Edith Hamilton

45. “THE Greeks did not believe that the gods created the universe. It was the other way about: the universe created the gods. Before there were gods heaven and earth had been formed. They were the first parents. The Titans were their children, and the gods were their grandchildren.”

— Edith Hamilton

46. “The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view.”

— Edith Hamilton

47. “A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”

— Edith Hamilton

48. “The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.”

— Edith Hamilton

49. “Tell him, too,” she said, “never to pluck flowers, and to think every bush may be a goddess in disguise.”

— Edith Hamilton

50. “A man without fear cannot be a slave.”

— Edith Hamilton