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.

Edith Hamilton

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

Edith Hamilton

belief faith inspirational

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

Edith Hamilton

greek beautiful world

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

Edith Hamilton

conquer defeat evil

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

stress education life

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

remembrance pain suffering

Love cannot live where there is no trust.

Edith Hamilton

cupid bad-relationship trust

Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom.

Edith Hamilton

responsibility pay men

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

real writing people

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

Edith Hamilton

libertarian-party freedom responsibility

Old ideas are continually being slain by new facts. There is nothing stable in the conclusions of the mind, and it is impossible that there ever should be unless we hold that the universe is made to the measure of the human mind, an assumption for which nothing in the past gives any warrant.

Edith Hamilton

giving past ideas

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

Edith Hamilton

gaining-knowledge wells results

In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.

Edith Hamilton

party witty men

The mind knows only what lies near the heart.

Edith Hamilton

mind heart lying

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

sweet peace country

Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.

Edith Hamilton

greek names men

It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.

Edith Hamilton

dreary superficial hard-work

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.

Edith Hamilton

unique humility book

The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.

Edith Hamilton

hazards fullness life

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

Edith Hamilton

pain tragedy writing

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

Edith Hamilton

decision faith facts