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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.

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
Becoming
Study
Insists
Rather
Outward
Culture
Inward
Spirit
Condition
Mind
Perfection
Something
Circumstances
Conditions

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Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.
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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.
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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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.
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Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
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God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
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Eutrapelia . A happy and gracious flexibility, Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.
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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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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.
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All the live murmur of a summer's day.
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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
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Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
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Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.
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But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth.
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I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.
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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.
Matthew Arnold