Edith Hamilton

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

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

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

To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful ... was a mark of the Greek spirit.

Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, aone with her outraged love and her ruined life.

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.

I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.

Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)

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

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

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