Matthew Arnold Quotes

We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.

Matthew Arnold

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Quotes to Explore

• The fondest dream of the information age is to create an archive of all knowledge. You might call it the Alexandrian fantasy, after the great library founded by Ptolemy I in 286 BC.

  

  Gary Wolf
  • Great
  • Age
  • Dream

• In a typically contradictory move, globalisation, while promoting economic integration among elites, has exacerbated sectarianism everywhere else.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • Economic
  • Move
  • Integration

• The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Trouble
  • Young
  • Sixties

• A lot of my creative energy is spent coming up with a concept that, once I get it, I feel like it writes itself.

  

  Mallory Ortberg
  • Up
  • Energy
  • Feel

• I worry unnecessarily.

  

  Natalie Imbruglia
  • Worry
  • Unnecessarily

• I think every high school student who was alert during the early '60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • School
  • High
  • Violence

• I never thought I was a very good manager.

  

  Barry Diller
  • Good
  • Thought
  • Manager

• If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.

  

  Lars von Trier
  • Power
  • Want
  • Stronger

• There'll be a special place in hell for the tape back-up people.

  

  Adam Osborne
  • People
  • Up
  • Special

• I've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped.

  

  Nawal El Saadawi
  • College
  • Fighting
  • Child

• There's stuff I don't like to rehearse, really emotional things, I don't like to rehearse. You just beat it to death.

  

  Kat Dennings
  • Death
  • You
  • Emotional

• Hollywood's not knocking on our door. They're banging down the door with a sledgehammer.

  

  Watkin Tudor Jones
  • Door
  • Down
  • Hollywood

• It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.

  

  Camille Pissarro
  • Character
  • True
  • Day

• I came rather late to film. I've done an awful lot of theater before - before I discovered the camera, you know, seeing everything, requiring much less acting and - and much less presentation, much less projecting, more just being.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • Done
  • Acting
  • Camera

• I played baseball growing up, second base, and then when I got to high school,it just didn't exist there.

  

  Finn Wittrock
  • Up
  • School
  • High

• When Wolf Blitzer wears a not-so-great tie, how much e-mail do you think he gets? My point is, for women, unfortunately, appearance is part of the job.

  

  Brown Campbell
  • Great
  • Women
  • Job

• New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class.

  

  Edmund White
  • New York
  • Group
  • Immigrant

• I think you write the film that you want to see, and you try and do it honestly, and you can't control people's responses, really.

  

  Edgar Wright
  • People
  • Want
  • Control

• First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.

  

  P. D. James
  • Life
  • Travel
  • Pay

• The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

  

  John Maynard Keynes

• The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.

  

  William Osler
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Book

• I don't think that anybody should be suspended for life for anything, other than murder. How is it helping someone to say, 'You're done forever, your life's over'?

  

  George Steinbrenner
  • Forever
  • Should
  • Helping

• If we wish to stop the atrocities, we will need to understand and change the social and economic conditions that cause them.

  

  Derrick Jensen
  • Stop
  • Wish

• We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.

  

  Matthew Arnold