Quote

Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

Matthew Arnold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Matthew Arnold
Age: 65 †
Born: 1822
Born: December 24
Died: 1888
Died: April 15
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
School Inspector
University Teacher
Writer
Laleham
Surrey
Sick
Asking
Prow
Ought
Starlit
Stand
Forwards
Vessel
Weary
Sea
Bears

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

Image
Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head, and give The ill he cannot cure a name.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Style ... is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
Matthew Arnold
Image
We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.
Matthew Arnold
Image
I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Matthew Arnold
Image
We do not what we ought What we ought not, we do And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.
Matthew Arnold
Image
If Paris that brief flight allow, My humble tomb explore! It bears: Eternity, be thou My refuge! and no more.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
Matthew Arnold
Image
Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Weep bitterly over the dead, for he is worthy, and then comfort thyself drive heaviness away: thou shall not do him good, but hurt thyself.
Matthew Arnold
Image
ForTime, not Corydon, hath conquered thee.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative.
Matthew Arnold
Image
In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Now the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Matthew Arnold