The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAh! two desires toss about The poet’s feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
-
-
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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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.
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 -
If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
How many minds–almost all the great ones–were formed in secrecy and solitude!
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Weep bitterly over the dead, for he is worthy, and then comfort thyself; drive heaviness away: thou shall not do him good, but hurt thyself.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Greatness is a spiritual condition.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD