Matthew Arnold Quotes
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I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.
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Such a price The Gods exact for song; To become what we sing.
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Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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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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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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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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Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?
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The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.
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Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
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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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I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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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 true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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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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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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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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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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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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Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall.
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The will is free; Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful; The seeds of god-like power are in us still; Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!