Who said “There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to…”?

“Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.”

“Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.”

“Humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language.”

“A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.”

“The best thing on translation was said by Cervantes: translation is the other side of a tapestry.”

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

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

“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.”

“Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.”

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

“The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, ''Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.'' The Greek said, ''All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.''”