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

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for the purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater than Dickens - Thackeray himself.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

Personality is lower than partiality.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

Rome was great in arms, in government, in law.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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

The natural barriers between England and Scotland were not sufficient to prevent the extension of the Saxon settlements and kingdoms across the border.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power to bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying that they wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, to bring back the Middle Ages.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs.
- Goldwin Smith Quote

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?
- Goldwin Smith Quote