Quote

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.

Matthew Arnold

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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
Hours
Lays
Twere
Wish
Burden
Aching
Hands
Bear
Discern
Light
Stones
Heap
Done
Bears
Bleeding
Long
Built
Stone
Life
Return
Heat
Feet
Till

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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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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.
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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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.
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Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
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The hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits, this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
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If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.
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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.
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Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
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Truth illuminates and gives joy and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.
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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.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
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I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference.
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Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
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