Matthew Arnold Quotes


"It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Thought, Light, Spring, Sun)

"Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Heaven, Waiting)

"Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Knowledge, Gifts, Practice)

"Truth sits upon the lips of dying men."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Men, Truth, Dying)

"To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Happiness, Being, Proof, Sense)

"The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Religion, Morality, Emotion, Meaning)

"The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Light, Perfection, Pursuit, Sweetness)

"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Mind, Miracles)

"And we forget because we must and not because we will."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Forget, Will)

"Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur."
- Matthew Arnold
"Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Dream, Despair)

"Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Life, Concern)

"Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Love, Culture, Perfection, Study)

"Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Thought, Culture, World)

"For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Power, Creation, Literature, Man)

"France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: France)

"Greatness is a spiritual condition."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Greatness, Spiritual)

"Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Nature, Control, Man, Mind, Play, Sons, Wind)

"Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!"
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Home, Beliefs, Causes, Names)

"The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Age, Common sense)

"Journalism is literature in a hurry."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Journalism, Literature)

"Not a having and a resting, but a growing and becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Character, Culture, Perfection)

"Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Society, America)

"Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Poetry, Saying)

"Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Beauty, Life, Truth, Poetry, Criticism, Laws)

"Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Misery)

"Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Despair, Patience)

"Spare me the whispering, crowded room, the friends who come and gape and go, the ceremonious air of gloom - all, which makes death a hideous show."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Death, Friends)

"Still bent to make some port he knows not where, still standing for some false impossible shore."
- Matthew Arnold