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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.

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
Future
English
Conception
Religion
Goodness
Bliss
Lost
England
Ended
Around
Ones
Labour
Home
Middle
Table
Perfected
States
Class
Popular
Restored
Kind
State
Tables
Incessant
Common
Spread
Insulting

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I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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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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Come, dear children, let us away Down and away below!
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Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
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Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
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Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
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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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Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
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The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
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Thought and science follow their own law of development they are slowly elaborated in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in what Shakespeare calls ...The prophetic soul, Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
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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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Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.
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For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls And numb the elastic powers.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.
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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?
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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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