Mythology Quotes

“Love cannot live where there is no trust.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“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)”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“The mind knows only what lies near the heart.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

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

“Love and the Soul (for that is what Psyche means) had sought and, after sore trials, found each other; and that union could never be broken. (Cupid and Psyche)”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“...a chasm opened in the earth and out of it coal-black horses sprang, drawing a chariot and driven by one who had a look of dark splendor, majestic and beautiful and terrible. He caught her to him and held her close. The next moment she was being borne away from the radiance of earth in springtime to the world of the dead by the king who rules it.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“He drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek and make Hell grant what Love did seek. ”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Moderately wise each one should be,
Not overwise, for a wise man's heart
Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“One good thing, however, was there - Hope. It was the only good thing the casket had held among the many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“He was there beside her; yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“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, Mythology

“The early Greek mythologists transformed a world full of fear into a world full of beauty.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Tell him, too,” she said, “never to pluck flowers, and to think every bush may be a goddess in disguise.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“It is the men of this land who are bloodthirsty and they lay their own guilt on the gods.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“This idea the Greeks had of him is best summed up not by a poet, but by a philosopher, Plato: “Love—Eros—makes his home in men’s hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs. His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“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, Mythology

“We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicket that they will worship power, might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“We are to think (of the dead) that they pass into a better place and a happier condition.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“And now, though feeble and short-lived, mankind has flaming fire and therefrom learns many crafts.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“The hero can prove what he is only by dying. The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.
Such an attitude toward life seems at first sight fatalistic, but actually the decrees of an inexorable fate played no more part in the Norseman’s scheme of existence than predestination did in St. Paul’s or in that of his militant Protestant followers, and for precisely the same reason.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“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, Mythology

“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, Mythology

“The end, the tale of what happened to the Trojan women when Troy fell, comes from a play by Sophocles’ fellow playwright, Euripides. It is a curious contrast to the martial spirit of the Aeneid. To Virgil as to all Roman poets, war was the noblest and most glorious of human activities. Four hundred years before Virgil a Greek poet looked at it differently. What was the end of that far-famed war? Euripides seems to ask. Just this, a ruined town, a dead baby, a few wretched women.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“Intelligence did not figure largely in anything he did and was often conspicuously absent.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“When the boy was grown and out hunting, the goddess brought Callisto before him, intending to have him shoot his mother, in ignorance, of course. But Zeus snatched the bear away and placed her among the stars, where she is called the Great Bear. Later, her son Arcas was placed beside her and called the Lesser Bear. Hera, enraged at this honor to her rival, persuaded the God of the Sea to forbid the Bears to descend into the ocean like the other stars. They alone of the constellations never set below the horizon.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology