Quotes from Goldwin Smith

The father of confederation is deadlock.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature.