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The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

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
Hardly
Classic
Capable
Taught
Beauty
Assimilated
Power
Learnt
Character
Latin
Greek

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Style ... is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.
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For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion.
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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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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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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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In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
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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.
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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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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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The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.
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But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth.
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We do not what we ought What we ought not, we do And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.
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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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If Paris that brief flight allow, My humble tomb explore! It bears: Eternity, be thou My refuge! and no more.
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And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by And never once possess our soul Before we die.
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Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.
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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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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
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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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