Matthew Arnold

“The sterner self of the Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer.”

“For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb?”

“To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.”

“Alas, is even Love too weak to unlock the heart and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel?”

“The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.”

“For what can give a finer example of that frankness and manly self- confidence which our great public schools, and none of them so much as Eton, are supposed to inspire, of that buoyant ease in holding up one's head, speaking out what is in one's mind, and flinging off all sheepishness and awkwardness, than to see an Eton assistant-master offering in fact himself as evidence that to combine boarding-house- keeping with teaching is a good thing, and his brother as evidence that to train and race little boys for competitive examinations is a good thing?”

“Only--but this is rare--When a beloved hand is laid in ours,When, jaded with the rush and glareOf the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,When our world-deafen'd earIs by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.A man becomes aware of his life's flow,And hears its winding murmur; and he seesThe meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.”

“Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing: "There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she!She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')”

“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”

“Humid the air! Leafless, yet soft as spring. The tender purple spray on copse and briers! And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, she needs not June for beauty's heightening. Lovely all the time she lies...”

“And we forget because we must”

“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”

“Come to me in my dreams, and thenBy day I shall be well again!For so the night will more than payThe hopeless longings of the day.”

“Culture is the endeavour to know the best and to make this knowledge prevail for the good of all humankind.”

“No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!And the world hath the day, and must break thee,Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;And being lonely thou art miserable,For something has impair'd they spirit's strength,And dried its self-sufficing font of joy.”

“And each day brings it's pretty dust,Our soon-choked souls to fllAnd we forget because we must,And not because we will.”

“The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits--on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand . . .”

“Choose equality.”

“To see the object as in itself it really is”

“We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I do not know.”

“The man who to untimely death is doomed Vainly would hedge him in from the assault of harm; He bears the seed of ruin in himself.”

“The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”

“Art still has truth. Take refuge there.”

“Journalism is literature in a hurry.”

“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.”

“Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.”

“And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go.”

“The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness — a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.”

“Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery.”

“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.”

“Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep: And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers...”

“Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.”

“And we forget because we must and not because we will.”

“Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.”