Matthew Arnold Quotes - Page 2

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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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• 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”

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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)

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• 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

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• One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common--discontent.

  Matthew Arnold

  Age, Common, Youth

  'Youth's Agitations' (1852)

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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

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• 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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• 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

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

  Matthew Arnold

  Memories, Forget

  'Absence'

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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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• Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

  Matthew Arnold

  Hate, Passion, Light

  "Culture and Anarchy" by Matthew Arnold, (Ch. I), 1869.

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• 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)

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• 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)

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

  Matthew Arnold

  Summer

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

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• 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)

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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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• 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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• 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

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• 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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