Matthew Arnold: Quotes about the world

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

“The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century.”

Matthew Arnold

Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (December 1847/early 1848)
Context: Had Shakespeare and Milton lived in the atmosphere of modern feeling, had they had the multitude of new thoughts and feelings to deal with a modern has, I think it likely the style of each would have been far less curious and exquisite. For in a man style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age. In the 17th century it was a smaller harvest than now, and sooner to be reaped; and therefore to its reaper was left time to stow it more finely and curiously. Still more was this the case in the ancient world. The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century.

World

“For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.”

Matthew Arnold

Introduction to Ward's English Poets (1880)
Context: For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

World , Idea

“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”

Matthew Arnold
Women , World , Time

“Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.”

Matthew Arnold

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

World , Waiting , Dead

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
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.”

Matthew Arnold

"The Buried Life" (1852), st. 6

Life , World , Knowledge , Heart

“I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

Matthew Arnold

The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)

World , Learning

“It is — last stage of all —
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.”

Matthew Arnold

" Growing Old" (1867), st. 7

World

“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

“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

“The World in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love:
Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,
Remorse, grief, joy.”

Matthew Arnold

Source: Resignation (1849), l. 215-218

Love , World , Hope , Effort

“And as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else.”

Matthew Arnold

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

People , World , Sense , Reading

“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

“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.”

Matthew Arnold

The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)

World , Idea

“The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 3
Dover Beach (1867)

World , Faith , Sea , Night