Best quotes by Eva Brann

Eva Brann

Former dean and the longest-serving tutor

Eva T. H. Brann (born 1929) is a former dean (1990–1997) and the longest-serving tutor (1957–present) at St. John's College, Annapolis. She is a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

Brann was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. She immigrated in 1941 to the United States and received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1950, her M.A. in Classics from Yale University in 1951, and her Ph.D. in Archaeology from Yale in 1956. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College.

In her early years at St. John's, she was very close to Jacob Klein. After Klein died, Brann increasingly assumed his role as the defining figure of St. John's, the St. John's program, and the continuing dialogue with the Great Books represented by the program.

All quotes by Eva Brann:

Did the gods once mingle with humankind, or is Homer a visionary madman, or, what is worse, a mere poet, a maker-up of beautiful falsities, an elegant liar? I shall grapple with that perplexity, only to emerge as I went in, in a cloud of unknowing, if perhaps a little the wiser.

You will be educated, which means that you will be interested where others are bored, that you will notice unities where others experience randomness, and that you will intend meanings where others are just spouting words. For exactly that is supposed to be the result of becoming literate: The world becomes a thick texture of significance that you know how to “access.

A gentleman is someone who never gives offense unintentionally.