Matthew Arnold Quotes

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

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

Peace, peace is what I seek and public calm, Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

And these, all labouring for a lord,
Eat not the fruit of their own hands:
Which is the heaviest of all plagues,
To that man's mind, who understands.

- The Sick King in Bokhara

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep.

Time may restore us in his course Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force; But where will Europe’s latter hour Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?

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.

Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.

Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt’s rope chops round.

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...

I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.

The fewer there are who follow the way to perfection, the harder that way is to find.

Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.