Quotes from book
Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875.Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s.


Matthew Arnold photo

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

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.

Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo

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

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

Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo

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

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

Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.”

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

Matthew Arnold photo

“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.”

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.

Matthew Arnold photo

Similar authors

Matthew Arnold photo
Matthew Arnold 166
English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector… 1822–1888
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220
English poet, literary critic and philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche 655
German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl…
Heinrich Heine photo
Heinrich Heine 61
German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic
William Blake photo
William Blake 249
English Romantic poet and artist
Emily Brontë photo
Emily Brontë 151
English novelist and poet
Thomas Hardy photo
Thomas Hardy 171
English novelist and poet
John Ruskin photo
John Ruskin 133
English writer and art critic
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley 246
English Romantic poet
Robert Browning photo
Robert Browning 179
English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era