Quote

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

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
Half
Believer
Falter
Away
Deeds
Await
Light
Thou
Wanderers
Today
Ground
Hesitate
Life
Tomorrow
Believers
Lose
Spark
Loses
Casual
Heaven
Sparks
Wanderer

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

Image
Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
Matthew Arnold
Image
Youth dreams a bliss on this side of death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by And never once possess our soul Before we die.
Matthew Arnold
Image
To the Bible men will return and why? Because they cannot do without it.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Matthew Arnold
Image
Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
Matthew Arnold
Image
The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
Matthew Arnold
Image
I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
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