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Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the sky, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?

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
Done
Sky
Thing
Sun
Lived
Loved
Small
Nature
Light
Thought
Enjoyed

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Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
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Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
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The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
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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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There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, To make reason and the will of God prevail.
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Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.
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For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
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For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
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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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Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.
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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open To all always true.
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The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.
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The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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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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Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
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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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Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, To lead those false who trust it.
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