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 ARNOLDHome of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
-
-
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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Art still has truth. Take refuge there.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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.
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 -
Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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?
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Greatness is a spiritual condition.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
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?
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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 -
This strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.
MATTHEW ARNOLD -
Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.
MATTHEW ARNOLD