Quote

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

Matthew Arnold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Perfection
Light
Perfectionism
Perfectionist
Sweetness
Pursuit

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

Image
Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers in our casual deeds . . . Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today- Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?
Matthew Arnold
Image
The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep Where the spent lights quiver and gleam Where the salt weed sways in the stream.
Matthew Arnold
Image
I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Matthew Arnold
Image
English civilization the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society that is what interests me.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Matthew Arnold
Image
No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wanderertill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
Matthew Arnold
Image
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
Matthew Arnold
Image
But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth.
Matthew Arnold
Image
And we forget because we must and not because we will.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
Matthew Arnold
Image
It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
Image
They... who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.
Matthew Arnold
Image
But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
Matthew Arnold
Image
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, / Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secure / Didst tread on earth unguessed at. Better so!.
Matthew Arnold
Image
On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
Matthew Arnold