Quote

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

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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.
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They... who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.
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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
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Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
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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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Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
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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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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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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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Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
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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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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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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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Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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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.
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