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.
MATTHEW ARNOLDOthers abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
More Matthew Arnold Quotes
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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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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.
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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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And we forget because we must and not because we will.
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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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Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.
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Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.
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Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
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Now the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
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Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.
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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.
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I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
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History – a vast Mississippi of falsehoods
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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