Matthew Arnold Quotes

British poet and cultural critic (1822–1888)

Matthew Arnold (December 24 1822 – April 15 1888) was an English poet, essayist and cultural critic. He also pursued a career as an inspector of schools.

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Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!

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?

How generally, with how many of us, are the main concerns of life limited to these two: the concern for making money, and the concern for saving our souls!

The wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round.

- To the Duke of Wellington

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

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?

However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.

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.

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.

Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.

And amongst us one, Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne.

The difficulty for democracy is, how to find and keep high ideals.

Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.