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The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.

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
Poetry
Found
Else
Power
Best
Nothing
Delighting
Sustaining
Forming

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.
Matthew Arnold
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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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To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open To all always true.
Matthew Arnold
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Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.
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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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Greatness is a spiritual condition.
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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
Matthew Arnold
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Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.
Matthew Arnold
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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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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
Matthew Arnold
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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
Matthew Arnold
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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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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man taken by himself.
Matthew Arnold
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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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Like driftwood spares which meet and pass Upon the boundless ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas! Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
Matthew Arnold
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion.
Matthew Arnold