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.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAnd 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!
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
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They… who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.
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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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It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.
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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.
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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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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
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.
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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
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Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
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I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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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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And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
MATTHEW ARNOLD