Matthew Arnold Quotes
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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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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate.
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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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Choose equality.
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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 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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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
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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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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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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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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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Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver’d branches of the glade.
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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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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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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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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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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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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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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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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.
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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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Radiant with ardour divine! Beacons of Hope ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow.