Goldwin Smith Quotes

But if anyone supposes that there was no commercial fraud in the Middle Ages, let him study the commercial legislation of England for that period, and his mind will be satisfied, if he has a mind to be satisfied and not only a fancy to run away with him.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

The mighty and supreme Jesus, who was to transfigure all humanity by his divine wit and grace-this Jesus has flown.

In my youth,geology was nervously striving to accommodate itself to Genesis. Now it is Genesis that is striving to accommodate itself to geology.

Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God.

Canada is said to have got its name from the two Spanish words aca and nada, signifying 'there is nothing here.'

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.

Art is expression, and to have high expression you must have something high to express.

Rome was great in arms, in government, in law.

Personality is lower than partiality.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.

Ottawa - a sub-arctic lumber-village converted by royal mandate into a political cockpit.

Above all nations is humanity.

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

We Jews regard our race as superior to all humanity, and look forward, not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them.

The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

The father of confederation is deadlock.

It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city.

As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.

Rich by nature, poor by policy' might be written over Canada's door.

Ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the best instrument for cultivating the historical sense.