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

— Matthew Arnold

On Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." by Matthew Arnold?

Matthew Arnold 166

English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector… 1822–1888

Related quotes

“The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/feb/23/supply-ministerial-explanations to the House of Commons (23 February 1855) opposing the Crimean War.
1850s
Context: The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 3.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)
Source: Selected Poems

“One of those gifted ones that walk the earth,
Like angels in their beauty, and the while
The air is filled with music from their wings.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(31st January 1829) Lines to the Author after Reading the Sorrows of Rosalie
The London Literary Gazette, 1829

“The next question was — what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward.”

Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law

Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 1, “The Law of Gravitation,” p. 18: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk&t=17m10s

“Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
Context: What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud,
Serenely gazing at the violent abyss,
Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory, Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and
On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space,
Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight,
Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?