Quotes from Matthew Arnold

Round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her slowly chilling breath invade The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; I feel her finger light Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; -- The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotion new, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

This truth--to prove, and make thine own: Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.

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

Time gives his hour-glass Its due reversal. Their hour is gone.

What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?-- Most men eddy about Here and there--eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and, then they die-- Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, Foam'd for a moment, and gone.

But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us, to know Whence our lives come and where they go.

A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

The seeds of god-like power are in us still; Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

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.

Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.

The hour, whose happy Unalloy'd moments I would eternalise, Ten thousand mourners Well pleased see end.

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

The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.

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

Yes: in the sea of life enisl'd, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

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.

I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday; I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today.

[A] beautiful and ineffectual angel [Shelley], beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle.

Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven: and we,Light half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed…Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose tomorrow the ground won today—Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?