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English civilization the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society that is what interests me.

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
Truly
Interest
Humanizing
Society
Harmonious
Body
Humane
Whole
Bringing
Life
Interests
English
Civilization

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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.
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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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Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are not more.
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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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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Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
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Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, To lead those false who trust it.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou.
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Eutrapelia . A happy and gracious flexibility, Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.
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Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
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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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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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Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.
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