And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!
MATTHEW ARNOLDIt is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
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Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
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The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
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Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head, and give The ill he cannot cure a name.
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One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common–discontent.
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It is – last stage of all When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man
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However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.
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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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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.
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And we forget because we must and not because we will.
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
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Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.
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I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today.
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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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?
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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






