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 ARNOLDWhoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
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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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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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If 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.
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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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Ah! two desires toss about The poet’s feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
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Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
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Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life.
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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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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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Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.
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Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.
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Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
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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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I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today.
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Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.
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And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die.
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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.
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If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.
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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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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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Men of culture are the true apostles of equality
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One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common–discontent.
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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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD