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 ARNOLDRelated Topics

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 ARNOLDNature’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 ARNOLDIf 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 ARNOLDWho hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
MATTHEW ARNOLDCome, dear children, let us away; Down and away below!
MATTHEW ARNOLDNot a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
MATTHEW ARNOLDHowever, 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 ARNOLDCulture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
MATTHEW ARNOLDPoetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAt 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 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.
MATTHEW ARNOLDThe eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
MATTHEW ARNOLDHome of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
MATTHEW ARNOLDTime 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 ARNOLDFor this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
MATTHEW ARNOLDJoy 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