All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. Matthew Arnold More Quotes by Matthew Arnold More Quotes From Matthew Arnold Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner. Matthew Arnold morality certain ideas All pains the immortal spirit must endure, Matthew Arnold pain grief success The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. Matthew Arnold light perfection reason To the Bible men will return; and why? Because they cannot do without it. Matthew Arnold return men The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting. Matthew Arnold differences ideas thinking The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour. Matthew Arnold animal giving men History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods Matthew Arnold mississippi falsehood Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. Matthew Arnold passion hate light Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience. Matthew Arnold human-experience voice religion It does not try to reach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords of its own. It seeks to away with classes, to make the best that has been taught and known in the world current everywhere, to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely--nourished, and not bound by them. Matthew Arnold light winning men O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain! Matthew Arnold vain strong soul Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves. Matthew Arnold political self ordinary Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye. Matthew Arnold sailing whales eye The eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness. Matthew Arnold righteousness eternal But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus. Matthew Arnold secret sweet jesus Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. Matthew Arnold lips dying men And as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. Matthew Arnold israel inspiration reading O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife. Matthew Arnold modern-life sick heart The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience . Matthew Arnold consciousness spontaneity ideas The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can. Matthew Arnold sustaining best-poetry found
