Matthew Arnold Quotes

Quotes about:

• If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.

  Matthew Arnold

  Time, Together, World

  62 Copy quote

• Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Becoming, Life Is

  41 Copy quote

• Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

  Matthew Arnold

  Class, Wealth, Middle

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.816, Delphi Classics

  50 Copy quote

• The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

  Matthew Arnold

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Common Sense

  God and the Bible: A Review of Objections to Literature and Dogma (1875)

  56 Copy quote

• Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.

  Matthew Arnold

  Dance, History, Art And Culture

  'Literature and Dogma' (1873) preface

  39 Copy quote

• Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

  Matthew Arnold

  Beautiful, Impressive, Poetry Is

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.689, Delphi Classics

  38 Copy quote

• Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

  Matthew Arnold

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Sadness

  'Self-Dependence' (1852) l. 31

  37 Copy quote

• Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.

  Matthew Arnold

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  37 Copy quote

• At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.

  Matthew Arnold

  Christian, Eye, Men

  Matthew Arnold (1875). “God & the Bible: A Review of Objections to 'Literature & Dogma'”, p.14

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• Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

  Matthew Arnold

  Writing, Secret, Famous Writers

  Quoted in G.W. E. Russell, Collections and Recollections (1898)

  21 Copy quote

• Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

  Matthew Arnold

  Sea, Solitude, Thrown

  'A Wish' (1867)

  29 Copy quote

• The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.

  Matthew Arnold

  School, Differences, Soul

  Essays in Criticism Second Series, "Thomas Gray" (1888)

  14 Copy quote

• The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.

  Matthew Arnold

  Art, Destiny, Race

  Matthew Arnold (1961). “Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold”, Houghton Mifflin College Division

  20 Copy quote

• 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.

  Matthew Arnold

  Writing, Men, Two

  Essays in Criticism First Series, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1865)

  12 Copy quote

• The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they are.

  Matthew Arnold

  Knowledge, Science, Knowing

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Celtic Literature”, p.9, Lulu Press, Inc

  17 Copy quote

• This strange disease of modern life,
  With its sick hurry, its divided aims.

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Sick, Disease

  'The Scholar-Gipsy' (1853) l. 201

  23 Copy quote

• Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself.

  Matthew Arnold

  Taken, Men, Numbers

  "Democracy" (1861)

  5 Copy quote

• Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Beautiful, Dream

  "Dover Beach" l. 35 (1867)

  18 Copy quote

• But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go.

  Matthew Arnold

  Heart, Fire, Desire

  Matthew Arnold (1994). “Dover Beach and Other Poems”, p.24, Courier Corporation

  16 Copy quote

• Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

  Matthew Arnold

  Art, Refuge, Stills

  Matthew Arnold (1994). “Dover Beach and Other Poems”, p.22, Courier Corporation

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• Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.

  Matthew Arnold

  Culture, World, Said

  Attributed to Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma". "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations", pp. 216-218, 1922.

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• The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.

  Matthew Arnold

  Men, Light, Growth

  Matthew Arnold (1894). “Mixed Essays: Irish Essays and Others”

  15 Copy quote

• The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

  Matthew Arnold

  Poetry, Simplicity, Noble

  On Translating Homer: Last Words (1862)

  5 Copy quote

• And we forget because we must and not because we will.

  Matthew Arnold

  Memories, Forget

  'Absence'

  4 Copy quote

• Genius is mainly an affair of energy.

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Energy, Genius

  Matthew Arnold (1875). “Essays in Criticism”, p.58, London : [s.n.]

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