A Quote by Goldwin Smith

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

Goldwin Smith

Quote Topics

Ages Effort Life Live Middle Middle Age Middle Ages Perpetual Prevarication Real Were Would Would Be Your

Quote Author

Goldwin Smith
Canadian - Historian
August 13, 1823 - June 7, 1910

...a condemned man who, at the hour of death, says or thinks that if the alternative were offered him of existing somewhere, on a height of rock or some narrow elevation, where only his two feet could stand, and round about him the ocean, perpetual gloom, perpetual solitude, perpetual storm, to remain there standing on a yard of surface for a lifetime, a thousand years, eternity! - rather would he live thus than die at once? Only live, live, live! - no matter how, only live!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks, everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar time, when we're losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Dave Eggers

In the Middle Ages the king offered protection to his subjects in return for their loyalty, and the subjects were doubly protected, for the church also sheltered them. The need for shelter - for a father image that cares and will hopefully provide and give some meaning to human lives - remains as real as it was in the Middle Ages, but modern technocracy has no place for either the father or the church and provides no substitute.

Robert Payne

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

Barry Lopez

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.

Chuck Palahniuk

The 'Middle Ages/Dark Ages' were of course no such thing. Achievement in the Arabian crescent was sensational then.

Bettany Hughes

Would you be willing to give your life to save the world if no one ever knew your name? If anonymity was the price you would have to pay for significance, would it be too great a price? To live a life of courage is not a guarantee of prestige or adulation. It only matters if you live and die fulfilling the mission you were born for.

Erwin McManus

Had today's technophobic zealots [environmental activists] been in charge in previous centuries, we would have to roll human progress back to the Middle Ages - and beyond, since even fire, the wheel and organic farming pose risks, and none would have passed the "absolute safety" test the zealots demand. Putting them in charge now would mean an end to progress, and perpetual deprivation for inhabitants of developing nations.

Paul Driessen

There is a concerted effort to keep you and me, you know, the people, away from what it [war] really looks like, 'cause when you're selling war, when it's such a big industry. What they don't tell you is the rest of it and the down side of it. And so obviously there is a lot of money and a lot of time and effort being spent on that campaign "perpetual war for perpetual peace".

Henry Rollins

Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages.

Kingsley Amis

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.

Barry Lopez

In my mind, if you went back to the Middle Ages, in Italy they'd be speaking Middle Age Italian. And at that point, it would obviously be indecipherable for us, but for the people of that time, it was just normal talking.

Jeff Baena

The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

Tom Robbins

The dominant trance of the planet is that we live in a perpetual sense of lack, a perpetual sense of, "If only I could make this small tweak, then I would feel okay." And, of course, none of the tweaks ever work in the long term.