Quote

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

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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
Fear
Conceal
Would
Reveal
Men
Blank
Indifference
Mets
Mass
Thoughts
Knew

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Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
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The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
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Force and right are the governors of this world force till right is ready.
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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.
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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
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For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
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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.
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Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.
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Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
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ForTime, not Corydon, hath conquered thee.
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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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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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Greatness is a spiritual condition.
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Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.
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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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For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion.
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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.
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Like driftwood spares which meet and pass Upon the boundless ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas! Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
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