 Art is expression, and to have high expression you must have something high to express. |
| Personality is lower than partiality. |
| 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. |
| 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 insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke. |
| Above all nations is humanity. |
| 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. |
| The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature. |
| The natural barriers between England and Scotland were not sufficient to prevent the extension of the Saxon settlements and kingdoms across the border. |
| 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? |
| Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches. |
| The Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. |
| That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication. |
| America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious. |
| 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. |
| We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it may explain everything else, cannot explain itself. |
| 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. |
