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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.

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
Creative
Happiness
Sense
Great
Proof
Activity
Alive

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant.
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The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
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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.
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To the Bible men will return and why? Because they cannot do without it.
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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
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And we forget because we must and not because we will.
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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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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Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
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Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
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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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For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire.
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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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For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
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We must hold fast to the austere but true doctrine as to what really governs politics and saves or destroys states. Having in mind things true, things elevated, things just, things pure, things amiable, things of good report having these in mind, studying and loving these, is what saves states.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold