MATTHEW ARNOLD QUOTES
English poet & critic (1822-1888)
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.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Dover Beach
Lack of recent information is responsible for more mistakes of judgment than erroneous reasoning.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
attributed, "The Living Law", Harper's Weekly, February 26, 1916
Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Resignation"
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Sohrab and Rustum"
Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"A Question: To Fausta"
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play,
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Empedocles on Etna
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little: but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Memorial Verses
We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I do not know.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Essays on Criticism
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
The Last Word
The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Essays in Criticism, Second Series
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners
Miracles do not happen.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
preface, Literature and Dogma
But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok'd souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Absence"
Art still has truth. Take refuge there.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Memorial Verses
Such a price
The Gods exact for song;
To become what we sing.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses"
With women the heart argues, not the mind.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Merope
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"A Question: To Fausta"
So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Empedocles on Etna
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
"Democracy"
Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Heinrich Heine", Essays in Criticism, First Series