Matthew Arnold: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Such a price
The Gods exact for song;
To become what we sing.”

Matthew Arnold

" The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses http://www.poetry-archive.com/a/the_strayed_reveller_to_ulysses.html"

God , Singing

“It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.”

Matthew Arnold

"Democracy" (1861)

Question , Thinking

“That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.”

Matthew Arnold

"A Word More About America" (1885)

“The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. IV, Hebraism and Hellenism

Idea

“On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.”

Matthew Arnold

Literary Influence of Academies, p. 69
Essays in Criticism (1865)

History

“Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light

Love

“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

"Mixed Essays, Equality" (1879)

Nature

“Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.”

Matthew Arnold

Source: Literature and Dogma (1873), Ch. 1

Life

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

Matthew Arnold

To An Independent Preacher

Lie , Hope , Nature

“The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.”

Matthew Arnold On Translating Homer

On Translating Homer (1861)

Nature

“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" (1852), st. 10

Peace , Feeling , Soul

“Ah! two desires toss about
The poet's feverish blood;
One drives him to the world without,
And one to solitude.”

Matthew Arnold

"Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann"" (1852), st. 24

World , Solitude

“How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again — thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!”

Matthew Arnold

"Philomela" (1853), st. 3

Pain , Passion

“Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.”

Matthew Arnold

The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)

“Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!”

Matthew Arnold

Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Truth , Age , Beauty , Home

“This is the aim of the following essay: to show that, when we come to put the right construction on the Bible, we give to the Bible a real experimental basis, and keep on this basis throughout; instead of any basis of unverifiable assumption to start with, followed by a string of other unverifiable assumptions of the like kind, such as the received theology necessitates.
And this aim we cannot seek without coming in sight of another aim, too, which we have often and often pointed out, and tried to recommend: 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

Preface
Literature and Dogma (1873)

World , History

“Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. III, Barbarians, Philistines, Populace

Life

“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.”

Matthew Arnold

" On the Study of Celtic Literature http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/scl/index.htm" (1867), Pt. 6

“All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!
— And what am I, that I am here? 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

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Truth , Youth , Faith , Star

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

Matthew Arnold book Empedocles on Etna

Act II
Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Star , Silence , Night