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Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

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
Necessary
Effects
Circumstances
Brutalizing
Present
Upper
Middle
Inequality
Justice
Lower
Class
Diversity
Natural
Effect

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The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.
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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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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
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Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself.
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The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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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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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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It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.
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Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
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Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun.
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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.
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Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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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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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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All the live murmur of a summer's day.
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Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye.
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And we forget because we must and not because we will.
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We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
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