Quote

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.

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
Cannot
Gloom
Stills
Fulfill
Still
Insight
Soul
Tasks
Heart
Mystery
Abides
Fire
Kindle
Hours
Resides
Spirit
Kindles

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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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The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.
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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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Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
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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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The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
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Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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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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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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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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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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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!
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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!.
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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.
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The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
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One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class.
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