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

• Previous
• Next

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

• Your private life is your private life and you keep it to yourself. You get more respect that way.

  

  Jay Kay Jamiroquai
  • Life
  • Respect

• I'm basically a know-it-all, and I'm writing a book about it. I want it to be called 'Danson on Water' and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water.

  

  Ted Danson
  • Want
  • Water
  • Basically

• And he realized... that fragile, mortal life wasn't just important to him. It was more important than his own.

  

  Nalini Singh
  • Life
  • Important

• Put simply, the Bush administration policy in the Middle East is continuing to fail.

  

  Jerome Corsi

• When I was a child, fear was common to my life - fear of having nothing to eat, fear of the other children taunting me at school because I was illegitimate, and particularly fear of the big bombers appearing overhead and dropping their lethal bursts from the sky.

  

  Sofia Villani Scicolone
  • Children
  • School
  • Common

• 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