Matthew Arnold Quotes
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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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Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.
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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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Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
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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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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
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Not a having and a resting, but a growing and becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
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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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Choose equality.
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If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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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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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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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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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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Critical power...tends to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail.
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What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.
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The men of culture are the true apostles of 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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Her cabin’d, ample Spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death.
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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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There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed.