G. M. Young Quotes

“It was one of Lord Salisbury's paradoxes that only uncontentious legislation should be brought before Parliament: if it were contentious, then public opinion was not ripe for it.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)

“To attend a place of worship, to abstain from spirits, to read a serious newspaper and put money in the savings bank, was in 1840 as good an ideal as could be set before a man. To pursue it gave him rank as a citizen, the promise of a vote, and a share in a solid civilization.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)

“A flight of perplexed unstable minds into the Confessional, into Spiritualism, into strange Eastern Cults.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)

“The human mind is still something of a troglodyte. Expelled from one falling cavern, its first thought is to find another.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)

“To play King Richard to somebody else's Wat Tyler has always been a Tory fancy.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)

“Of historic method, indeed, nothing wiser has ever been said than a word which will be found in Gibbon's youthful Essay on the Study of Literature. Facts, the young sage instructs us, are of three kinds: those which prove nothing beyond themselves, those which serve to illustrate a character or explain a motive, and those which dominate the system and move its springs.”

G. M. Young

Portrait of an Age (1936)