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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.

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
Conditions
Beauty
Law
Truth
Poetic
Life
Fixed
Criticism
Laws
Poetry

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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Now the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Matthew Arnold
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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!.
Matthew Arnold
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Eutrapelia . A happy and gracious flexibility, Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.
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.
Matthew Arnold
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For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
Matthew Arnold
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Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.
Matthew Arnold
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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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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
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
Matthew Arnold
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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
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
Matthew Arnold
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God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
Matthew Arnold
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I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.
Matthew Arnold
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Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
Matthew Arnold
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Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
Matthew Arnold
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However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.
Matthew Arnold