Matthew Arnold Quotes

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

Culture . . . seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light...

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.

We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.

Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, By contemplation of diviner things.

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

The State is of the religion of all its citizens without the fanaticism of any of them.

Therefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we must be understood always to imply that within each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if we may so call them,−−persons who are mainly led, not by their class spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of
human perfection

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

Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.

Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate.

The circumambient gloom
But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom.

- Mycerinus

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!

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

Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar.