Goldwin Smith - Lectures And Essays (1881)

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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
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.

Goldwin Smith
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.

Goldwin Smith
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.

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

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

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

Goldwin Smith