And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die.
MATTHEW ARNOLDIf an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
-
-
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Not deep the poet sees, but wide.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Now the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
For 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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
And we forget because we must and not because we will.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Art still has truth. Take refuge there.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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 -
The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they are.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Nature’s great law, and the law of all men’s minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers.
MATTHEW ARNOLD