Quote

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.

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
Flow
Shallow
Deep
Obscure
Strong
Streams
Light
Central
Feel
Current
Feels
Currents
Noiseless
Think
Surface
Flows
Thinking
Indeed
Stream

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Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.
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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
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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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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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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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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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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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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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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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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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Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
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A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.
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Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes Ah, would that I did too!
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Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
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The world hath failed to impart the joy our youth forebodes failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.
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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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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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All the live murmur of a summer's day.
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