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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.

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
Gay
Perhaps
Frivolity
Age
Hardness
May
Sage
Without
Alas
Years
Hence
Dawn
Fortunate

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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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And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by And never once possess our soul Before we die.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the sky, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?
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Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear -- And struck his finger on the place, And said -- Thou ailest here, and here.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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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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Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
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The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.
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What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.
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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
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The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
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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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Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye.
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Style ... is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.
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