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Matthew Arnold

213 quotes

“I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (c. 6 December 1847); note the alternate spelling of Shakespeare
“We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides; — But tasks, in hours of insight willed, Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Morality", st. 1 (1852)
“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.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lines Written in Kensington Gardens", st. 10 (1852)
“Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Marguerite: Continued", st. 1 (1852)
“A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Marguerite: Continued", st. 4 (1852)
“With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day and wish’t were done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Morality", l. 7 (1852)
“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? I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; I knew they lived and moved Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet The same heart beats in every human breast!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 2 (1852)
“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 (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 6 (1852)
“And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 6 (1852)
“Only — but this is rare — When a belovèd 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.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 6 (1852)
“Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Self-Dependence", ll. 31-32 (1852)
“What shelter to grow ripe is ours? What leisure to grow wise?”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann'", st. 18 (1852)
“Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann'", st. 24 (1852)
“We, in some unknown Power's employ, Move on a rigorous line; Can neither, when we will, enjoy, Nor, when we will, resign.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann'", st. 34 (1852)
“Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Rhine", st. 4 (1852)
“And sigh that only one thing has been lent To youth and age in common — discontent.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Youth's Agitations", l. 13 (1852)
“This heart, I know, To be long lov’d was never fram’d; For something in its depths doth glow Too strange, too restless, too untam’d.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Farewell", st. 5 (1852)
“I too have long'd for trenchant force, And will like a dividing spear; Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Farewell", st. 9 (1852)
“To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Parting" (1852)
“Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Parting" (1852)
“What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Poems (1853)
“Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Requiescat", st. 1 (1853)
“Her cabin’d, ample Spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Requiescat", st. 4 (1853)
“Hark! ah, the nightingale — The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark! — what pain!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Philomela", st. 1 (1853)
“How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again — thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Philomela", st. 4 (1853)
“I am past thirty, and three parts iced over.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (12 February 1853)
“Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Poems (1854)
“A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 7 (1854)
“A man becomes aware of his life's flow... And there arrives a lull in the hot race.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", sts. 7 and 8 (1854)
“And then he thinks he knows The Hills where his life rose, And the Sea where it goes.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Buried Life", st. 8 (1854)
“Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Summer Night", st. 5 (1855)
“How fair a lot to fill Is left to each man still.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Summer Night", st. 10 (1855)
“Their ineffectual feuds and feeble hates, Shadows of hates, but they distress them still.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Balder Dead (1855) pt. 3, l. 466
“Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Longing", st. 1 (1855)
“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 (1822–1888) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Absence", st. 3 (1857)
“This truth — to prove, and make thine own: ‘Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.’”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Isolation: To Marguerite", st. 5 (1857)
“Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm, Endless extinction of unhappy hates.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Merope (1858) l. 100 (, to )
“With women the heart argues, not the mind.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Merope (1858) l. 341 ()
“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 (1822–1888) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Democracy" (1861)
“It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Democracy" (1861)
“It is — last stage of all — When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Growing Old", st. 7 (1867)
“Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poor Matthias" (1867)
“Hath man no second life? — Pitch this one high!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anti-Desperation", st. 3 (1867)
“Was Christ a man like us? — Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anti-Desperation", st. 4 (1867)
“The East bowed low before the blast, In patient deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Obermann' Once More", st. 28 (1867)
“Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Wish", st. 5 (1867)
“Ere the parting hour go by, Quick, thy tablets, Memory!”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Memory-Picture", refrain (1869)
“I will not say that thou wast true, Yet let me say that thou wast fair! And they that lovely face who view, They should not ask if truth be there.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Euphrosyne", st. 1 (1869)
“Style...is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867) pt. 6
“The Celts certainly have it in a wonderful measure.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867) pt. 6; referring to style