Matthew Arnold Quotes
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The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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Spare me the whispering, crowded room, the friends who come and gape and go, the ceremonious air of gloom - all, which makes death a hideous show.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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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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The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.
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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.
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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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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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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
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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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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.
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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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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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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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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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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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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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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 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!
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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Journalism is literature in a hurry.
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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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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.