With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish ’twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.
MATTHEW ARNOLDFor poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
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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.
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I knew the mass of men conceal’d Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d They would by other men be met With blank indifference.
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Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.
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Not deep the poet sees, but wide.
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Time, so complain’d of, Who to no one man Shows partiality, Brings round to all men Some undimm’d hours.
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Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.
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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
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Journalism is literature in a hurry.
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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.
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles; and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
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How many minds–almost all the great ones–were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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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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Greatness is a spiritual condition.
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All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD