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What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.

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
American
Two
Elevation
Great
Chiefly
Really
Civilisation
Dues
Elements
Beauty
Interesting

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France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
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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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If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.
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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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And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, / Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secure / Didst tread on earth unguessed at. Better so!.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
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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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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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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
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For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
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The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience .
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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open To all always true.
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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
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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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Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
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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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