Quote

For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion.

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
World
Illusion
Poetry
Rest
Idea
Ideas
Everything

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

Image
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits, this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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
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
Image
Greatness is a spiritual condition.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Culture is properly described as the love of perfection it is a study of perfection.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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
Image
The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Nature's great law, and the law of all men's minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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
Image
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.
Matthew Arnold