All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.
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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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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Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
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A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.
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Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
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All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.
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Time may restore us in his course Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force: But where will Europe’s latter hour Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?
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Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are not more.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.
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The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.
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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.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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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.
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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!
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How many minds–almost all the great ones–were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.
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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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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.
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Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
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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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