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Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.

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
Great
Sanity
Spite
Variety
Ancient
Virtue
Modern
Literature
Defect
Power
Defects

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep Where the spent lights quiver and gleam Where the salt weed sways in the stream.
Matthew Arnold
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Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wanderertill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
Matthew Arnold
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The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
Matthew Arnold
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Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun.
Matthew Arnold
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For science, God is simply the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.
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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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
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
Matthew Arnold
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I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Matthew Arnold
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Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
Matthew Arnold