Matthew Arnold: Greatness

Matthew Arnold was English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Explore interesting quotes on greatness.
Matthew Arnold: 332   quotes 8   likes

“Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
Context: The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

Hate , Light , Passion

“What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time.”

Matthew Arnold

"Preface to Poems" (1853)
Context: What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.

Feeling , Time

“It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live.”

Matthew Arnold

Wordsworth, originally published as "Preface to the Poems of Wordsworth" in Macmillan's Magazine (July 1879)
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
Context: If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayam's words: "Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them, in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.

Life , Beauty , Idea , Question

“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

"Democracy" (1861)

Freedom

“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “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 book Culture and Anarchy

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

Life , People , Pleasure , Way

“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

"Preface to Poems" (1854)

Literature

“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

“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

“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)

“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

" Civilization in the United States http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ArnCivi.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all" (1888)

Beauty

“The great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay”

Matthew Arnold

Joubert, pp. 234–5
Essays in Criticism (1865)

“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.”

Matthew Arnold Thyrsis

St. 18
Thyrsis (1866)

Soul , Tree , Training , Country

“Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?”

Matthew Arnold

St. 3
The Forsaken Merman (1849)

Children , World , Music , Way

“The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Preface
Culture and Anarchy (1869)

World , Imagination , Knowledge , Help