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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.

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
Upon
Historian
Found
Depend
Truth
Brings
Thing
Depends
Unbeliever
Every
Level
Unbelievers
Men
Writer
Heroism
Levels
Common
Mediocrity

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If Paris that brief flight allow, My humble tomb explore! It bears: Eternity, be thou My refuge! and no more.
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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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I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference.
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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
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Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming
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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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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
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But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
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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.
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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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Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
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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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Greatness is a spiritual condition.
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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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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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Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.
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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.
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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.
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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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Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
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