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
A peoples 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
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
Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed. – Edith Hamilton
How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it? Science says that an acre of soil produces one horsepower every day. But you could pour gasoline all over the ground forever and never see it sprout maple trees. – William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth