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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
Great
Chiefly
Really
Civilisation
Dues
Elements
Beauty
Interesting
American
Two
Elevation

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To the Bible men will return and why? Because they cannot do without it.
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Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
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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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Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
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Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling
Matthew Arnold
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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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Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
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Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye.
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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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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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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Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, To lead those false who trust it.
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Youth dreams a bliss on this side of death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires.
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold