Quote

For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

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
Part
Poetry
Today
Divine
Ideas
Emotion
Everything
Rest
World
Religion
Attaches
Fact
Strongest
Idea
Unconscious
Facts
Illusion

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
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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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Truth illuminates and gives joy and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.
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Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.
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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.
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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
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For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls And numb the elastic powers.
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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.
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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
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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.
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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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If Paris that brief flight allow, My humble tomb explore! It bears: Eternity, be thou My refuge! and no more.
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We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
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With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.
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Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.
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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Matthew Arnold
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Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.
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