Goldwin Smith Quotes

• 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

• We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it may explain everything else, cannot explain itself.

  Goldwin Smith

• It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions.

  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

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

  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  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

• 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

• 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

• Personality is lower than partiality.

  Goldwin Smith

• 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

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

  Goldwin Smith

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

  Goldwin Smith

• 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

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

  Goldwin Smith

Goldwin Smith (29)

Birth:	13th August, 1823
Death:	7th June, 1910
Nationality:	British, Canadian
Profession:	Historian, Journalist

About

Goldwin Smith was born in Reading, Berkshire, England. He was a British-Canadian historian and journalist. He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, University of Oxford, and after a brilliant undergraduate career he was elected to a fellowship at University College, Oxford. He held the regius professorship of Modern History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866. In 1868 he threw up his career in England and settled in the United States, where he held the professorship of English and Constitutional History in the Department of History at Cornell University for a number of years. In 1871 he moved to Toronto, where he edited the Canadian Monthly, and subsequently founded the Week and the Bystander. He wrote several books include: The reorganization of the University of Oxford, Life of Jane Austen, Canada and the Canadian Question, The United Kingdom: A Political History, Lines of religious inquiry, Irish History And The Irish Question, In the court of history, and In Quest of Light.

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