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"The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature."
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"Every now and then I sit and watch the sun rise to remind myself how it's done-peacefully, steadily, warmly, and in beautiful color."

"Sipping teawith gleebeneath a gooseberry tree.I wish Alice were here.Oh, my dear,do not fear,she will be."

"Rain is a lullaby heard through a thick, isolating blanket of clouds. It is the tinkling harp of water droplets; a moist breath whistling through willow reeds; a pattering beat background to the mourner's melody. Rain is a soft song of compassion for the brokenhearted."

"Oh, mightiest wind,wilt thou cease thy breathing inand hold thy exhales?"

"Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket."

"No one can know the infinite importance of a tiny drop of water better than a thirsty bird or a little ant or a man of desert!"

"No flower is happy in a vase, because vase is nothing but an ornate coffin for the flower."

"All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within."
Explore more quotes by 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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."
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