Matthew Arnold Quotes & Sayings

The strongest part of a religion today is its unconscious poetry — Matthew Arnold

But so many books thou readest, But so many schemes thou breedest, But so many wishes feedest, That thy poor head almost turns. — Matthew Arnold

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man. — Matthew Arnold

Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die, Like spring flowers. Our vaunted life is one long funeral. Men dig graves, with bitter tears, For their dead hopes; and all, Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears, Count the hours. — Matthew Arnold

Most men eddy about Here and there-eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurled in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die- Perish;-and no one asks Who or what they have been. — Matthew Arnold

On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou. — Matthew Arnold

But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus. — Matthew Arnold

Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair. — Matthew Arnold

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret. — Matthew Arnold

And they see, for a moment,
Stretching out, like the desert
In its weary, unprofitable length,
Their faded ignoble lives.

While the locks are yet brown on thy head,
While the soul still looks through thine eyes,
While the heart still pours
The mantling blood to thy cheek,
Sink, O Youth, in thy soul!
Yearn to the greatness of Nature!
Rally the good in the depths of thyself. — Matthew Arnold

For what can give a finer example of that frankness and manly self- confidence which our great public schools, and none of them so much as Eton, are supposed to inspire, of that buoyant ease in holding up one's head, speaking out what is in one's mind, and flinging off all sheepishness and awkwardness, than to see an Eton assistant-master offering in fact himself as evidence that to combine boarding-house- keeping with teaching is a good thing, and his brother as evidence that to train and race little boys for competitive examinations is a good thing? — Matthew Arnold

Was Christ a man like us?-Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he! — Matthew Arnold

It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done. — Matthew Arnold

Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling — Matthew Arnold

Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it? — Matthew Arnold

To the Bible men will return; and why? Because they cannot do without it. — Matthew Arnold

The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting. — Matthew Arnold

It does not try to reach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords of its own. It seeks to away with classes, to make the best that has been taught and known in the world current everywhere, to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely
nourished, and not bound by them. — Matthew Arnold

Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. — Matthew Arnold

We must hold fast to the austere but true doctrine as to what really governs politics and saves or destroys states. Having in mind things true, things elevated, things just, things pure, things amiable, things of good report; having these in mind, studying and loving these, is what saves states. — Matthew Arnold

We should conceive of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. — Matthew Arnold

Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming. — Matthew Arnold

Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming — Matthew Arnold

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife. — Matthew Arnold

For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion. — Matthew Arnold

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly. — Matthew Arnold

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light. — Matthew Arnold

Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power. — Matthew Arnold

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul. — Matthew Arnold

Man errs not that he deems His welfare his true aim, He errs because he dreams The world does but exist that welfare to bestow. — Matthew Arnold

Spare me the whispering, crowded room, the friends who come and gape and go, the ceremonious air of gloom - all, which makes death a hideous show. — Matthew Arnold

All the live murmur of a summer's day. — Matthew Arnold

The study of letters is the study of the operation of human force, of human freedom and activity; the study of nature is the study of the operation of non-human forces, of human limitation and passivity. The contemplation of human force and activity tends naturally to heighten our own force and activity; the contemplation of human limits and passivity tends rather to check it. Therefore the men who have had the humanistic training have played, and yet play, so prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their prodigious ignorance of the universe. — Matthew Arnold

The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly. — Matthew Arnold

And we forget because we must and not because we will. — Matthew Arnold

Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life. — Matthew Arnold

Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread. — Matthew Arnold

Most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall. — 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

The world hath failed to impart the joy our youth forebodes; failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear. — Matthew Arnold

But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth. — 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

Six years-six little years-six drops of time. — Matthew Arnold

In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. — Matthew Arnold

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man. — Matthew Arnold

THE THOUGHTS that rain their steady glow Like stars on life's cold sea, Which others know, or say they know - They never shone for me. Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky, 5 But they will not remain. They light me once, they hurry by, And never come again. — Matthew Arnold

Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium. — Matthew Arnold

Beautiful city! ... spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age ... her ineffable charm ... Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! — Matthew Arnold

Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself. — Matthew Arnold

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. — Matthew Arnold

Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again. — Matthew Arnold

The will is free; Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful; The seeds of godlike power are in us still; Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will! — Matthew Arnold

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world. — Matthew Arnold

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. — Matthew Arnold

For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire. — Matthew Arnold

Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, To lead those false who trust it. — Matthew Arnold

Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. — Matthew Arnold

The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. — Matthew Arnold

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair. — Matthew Arnold

No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing
only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. — Matthew Arnold

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? — Matthew Arnold

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
Find their sole voice in that victorious brow. — Matthew Arnold

Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears. — Matthew Arnold

Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion
the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater, the passion for making them all prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindly masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. — Matthew Arnold

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam; Where the salt weed sways in the stream. — Matthew Arnold

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 Arnold

Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one — Matthew Arnold

Culture is the endeavour to know the best and to make this knowledge prevail for the good of all humankind. — Matthew Arnold

Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese. — Matthew Arnold

Not deep the poet sees, but wide. — 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

What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath? Yes; but not this alone. — Matthew Arnold

Humid the air! Leafless, yet soft as spring. The tender purple spray on copse and briers! And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, she needs not June for beauty's heightening. Lovely all the time she lies ... — Matthew Arnold

The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. — Matthew Arnold

Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians ... lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners. — Matthew Arnold

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. — Matthew Arnold

Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find. — 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. — Matthew Arnold

What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty. — Matthew Arnold

If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers. — Matthew Arnold

If Paris that brief flight allow, My humble tomb explore! It bears: Eternity, be thou My refuge! and no more. — Matthew Arnold

Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life. — Matthew Arnold

Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole. — Matthew Arnold

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron 's struggle cease. — 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

One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class. — Matthew Arnold

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I. — Matthew Arnold

Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class. — Matthew Arnold

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! — Matthew Arnold

When Byron's eyes were shut in death, We bow'd our head and held our breath. He taught us little; but our soul Had felt his like a thunder roll ... We watch'd the fount of fiery life Which serv'd for that Titanic life. — Matthew Arnold

I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today. — Matthew Arnold

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. — Matthew Arnold

Philistinism! - We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing. — Matthew Arnold

Youth dreams a bliss on this side of death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep; It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires. — Matthew Arnold

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things. — Matthew Arnold

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. — Matthew Arnold

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening ... — Matthew Arnold

And as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. — Matthew Arnold

Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar! The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel what others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live. — Matthew Arnold

Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery. — Matthew Arnold