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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.

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
Thought
Total
Best
Pursuit
Matter
Matters
Mean
Perfection
World
Concern
Getting
Means
Culture

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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.
Matthew Arnold
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No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
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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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Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are not more.
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Culture is properly described as the love of perfection it is a study of perfection.
Matthew Arnold
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I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
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Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
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.
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For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
Matthew Arnold
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Now, the whole world hears Or shall hear,--surely shall hear, at the last, Though men delay, and doubt, and faint, and fail,-- That promise faithful:--Fear not, little flock! It is your Father's will and joy, to give To you, the Kingdom!
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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!.
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
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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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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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.
Matthew Arnold
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For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls And numb the elastic powers.
Matthew Arnold
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Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
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Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
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The heart less bounding at emotion new, The hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
Matthew Arnold