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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
Mass
Thoughts
Knew
Fear
Conceal
Would
Reveal
Men
Blank
Indifference
Mets

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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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No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
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Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
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It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.
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All the live murmur of a summer's day.
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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.
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What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath? Yes but not this alone.
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Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
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Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself.
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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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Come, dear children, let us away Down and away below!
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To the Bible men will return and why? Because they cannot do without it.
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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.
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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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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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They... who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.
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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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