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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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