Matthew Arnold Quotes - Page 2

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• 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)

  20 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)

  22 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)

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• 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)

  33 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

  23 Copy quote

• Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.

  Matthew Arnold

  Perfection, Mind, Becoming

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• Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

  Matthew Arnold

  Death, Truth, Men

  'Sohrab and Rustum' (1853) l. 656

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

  Matthew Arnold

  Memories, Forget

  'Absence'

  9 Copy quote

• Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

  Matthew Arnold

  Men, Saint, Be A Man

  'Empedocles on Etna' (1852) act 1, sc. 2, l. 136

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• It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.

  Matthew Arnold

  Miracle, Mind, Impossible

  Matthew Arnold (1874). “Literature & Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible”, p.128

  7 Copy quote

• One must, I think, be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and far more still on what he reads during it.

  Matthew Arnold

  Thinking, Men, Each Day

  Matthew Arnold (1869). “Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism”, p.9

  4 Copy quote

• Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light
  in the sky, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?

  Matthew Arnold

  Nature, Light, Sky

  'Empedocles on Etna' (1852) act 1, sc. 2, l. 397

  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.]

  14 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)

  10 Copy quote

• Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.

  Matthew Arnold

  Circles, Ideas, Adequate

  Matthew Arnold, Stefan Collini (1993). “Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings”, p.41, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.

  Matthew Arnold

  Hiking, Mountain, Baldness

  'Wordsworth' in 'Essays in Criticism' Second Series (1888)

  8 Copy quote

• Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.

  Matthew Arnold

  Character, Perfection, Personality

  Culture and Anarchy ch. 1 (1869)

  7 Copy quote

• All the live murmur of a summer's day.

  Matthew Arnold

  Summer

  'The Scholar-Gipsy' (1853) l. 20

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• 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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• Not deep the poet sees, but wide.

  Matthew Arnold

  Poet, Wide

  'Resignation' (1849) l. 214

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• The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

  Matthew Arnold

  Latin, Character, Greek

  Schools and Universities on the Continent (1868)

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• Most men eddy about Here and there-eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurled in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die- Perish;-and no one asks Who or what they have been.

  Matthew Arnold

  Hate, Men, Dust

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.442, Delphi Classics

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• To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.

  Matthew Arnold

  Creative, Alive, Proof

  Matthew Arnold, Stefan Collini (1993). “Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings”, p.51, Cambridge University Press

  6 Copy quote

• The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

  Matthew Arnold

  Religious, Religion, Ethics

  'Literature and Dogma' (1873) ch. 1

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• Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

  Matthew Arnold

  Fate, Soul, Chance

  Matthew Arnold (1869). “Poems: Dramatic and lyric poems”, p.141

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