MATTHEW ARNOLD QUOTES IV

English poet & critic (1822-1888)

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

Literature & Dogma

Tags: culture


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

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Written in Emerson's Essays"


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

"The Buried Life"

Tags: thought


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.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Literature and Dogma

Tags: God


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

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Merope

Tags: truth


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

Culture and Anarchy

Tags: America


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.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Lines Written in Kensington Gardens"


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

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis"


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

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Resignation"