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"The Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race."
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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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."
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