Quote

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

Matthew Arnold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
Truth illuminates and gives joy and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
Matthew Arnold
Image
There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, To make reason and the will of God prevail.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Greatness is a spiritual condition.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
Matthew Arnold
Image
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.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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
Image
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold
Image
For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Matthew Arnold
Image
It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
Image
To the Bible men will return and why? Because they cannot do without it.
Matthew Arnold
Image
ForTime, not Corydon, hath conquered thee.
Matthew Arnold
Image
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
Matthew Arnold
Image
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