"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 … - Edith Hamilton

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.

Aristotle, the model scientist, the man of cool head and detached observation, unbiased, impersonal, does not display any dispassionate aloofness in his consideration of reason. He so loves it and delights in it that when it is the theme of discourse he cannot be held within the sober bounds of the scientific spirit. His words must be quoted, they are so characteristically Greek: Since then reason is divine in comparison with man’s whole nature, the life according to reason must be divine in comparison with (usual) human life. Nor ought we to pay regard to those who exhort us that as men we ought to think human things and keep our eyes upon mortality: nay, as far as may be, we should endeavor to rise to that which is immortal, and live in conformity with that which is best, in us. Now, what is characteristic of any nature is that which is best for it and gives most joy. Such to man is the life according to reason, since it is this that makes him man.

The sense of the wonder of human life, its beauty and terror and pain, and the power in men to do and to hear, is in Æschylus and in Shakespeare as in no other writer.