Matthew Arnold Quotes
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Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate.
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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
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And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. - Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
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Choose equality.
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Coldly, sadly descends The autumn evening. The Field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither’d leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;-hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play!
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And as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else.
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Who prop, thou ask'st in these bad days, my mind?' He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men, Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.
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The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.
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The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.
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The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of thy day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.
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With women the heart argues, not the mind.
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On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.
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For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
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The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.
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English civilization - the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society - that is what interests me.
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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.
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We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides; - But tasks, in hours of insight willed, Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.