39 Quotes & Sayings By Matthew Arnold

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

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us–to know Whence our lives come and where they go. Matthew Arnold

Only--but this is rare-- When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is 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 sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. Matthew Arnold

Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread. Matthew Arnold

But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course. Matthew Arnold

Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The 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 ever The kings of the sea.(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman') Matthew Arnold

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? Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;- on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Matthew Arnold

Waiting from heaven for the spark to fall. Matthew Arnold

, And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines! Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become? You, too, once lived; You, too, moved joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by Gods, In a mightier order, The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.But now, ye kindle Your lonely, cold-shining lights, Unwilling lingerers In the heavenly wilderness, For a younger, ignoble world; And renew, by necessity, Night after night your courses, In echoing, unneared silence, Above a race you know not– Uncaring and undelighted, Without friend and without home; Weary like us, though not Weary with our weariness. Matthew Arnold

For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire, Showed 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? Matthew Arnold

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? Matthew Arnold

It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done. Matthew Arnold

Journalism is literature in a hurry. Matthew Arnold

Poetry is simply the most beautiful impressive and widely effective mode of saying things. Matthew Arnold

The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children ... we have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment of our lives. Matthew Arnold

Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun to have lived light in the spring to have loved to have thought to have done? Matthew Arnold

Resolve to be thyself and know that who finds himself loses his misery. Matthew Arnold

They who await no gifts from chance have conquered fate. Matthew Arnold

We forget because we must And not because we will. Matthew Arnold

Nature with equal mind sees all her sons at play sees man control the wind the wind sweep man away. Matthew Arnold

The same heart beats in every human breast. Matthew Arnold

Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald with a baldness full of grandeur. Matthew Arnold

Resolve to be thyself. .. he who finds himself loses his misery! Matthew Arnold

Resolve to be thyself and know that he who finds himself loses his misery. Matthew Arnold

The pursuit of the perfect then is the pursuit of sweetness and light. Matthew Arnold

This strange disease of modern life with its sick hurry its divided aims. Matthew Arnold

Who hesitate and falter life away and lose tomorrow the ground won today. Matthew Arnold

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things. Matthew Arnold

Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur. Matthew Arnold

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair. Matthew Arnold

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next. Matthew Arnold

To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive. Matthew Arnold

Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Matthew Arnold

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. Matthew Arnold

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