Quotes from Matthew Arnold

Thou hast no right to bliss.

The day in its hotness,The strife with the palm;The night in her silence,The stars in their calm.

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.

Creep into thy narrow bed,Creep, and let no more be said!

Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man!

There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed.

The world in which we live and moveOutlasts aversion, outlasts love:Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,Remorse, grief, joy.

Style… is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.

Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.

But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.

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.

Still bent to make some port he knows not where, still standing for some false impossible shore.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

The working-class is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes.

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

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?

The strongest part of a religion today is its unconscious poetry

The sterner self of the Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer.

We mortal millions live alone.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits--on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand . . .

The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness — a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.

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.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another!

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep: And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers...