Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be imminent in poetry - and we have Shakespeare. Matthew Arnold More Quotes by Matthew Arnold More Quotes From Matthew Arnold Like driftwood spares which meet and pass Upon the boundless ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas! Man nears man, meets, and leaves again. Matthew Arnold oceanseamen Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese. Matthew Arnold swansgeeselong No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. Matthew Arnold energy-of-lifebattlesoul All this I bear, for, what I seek, I know: Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates. Matthew Arnold hateunhappypeace Youth dreams a bliss on this side of death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep; It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires. Matthew Arnold gratefuldreamsleep God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. Matthew Arnold churchgodschool And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening. Matthew Arnold junedreamsweet And each day brings it's pretty dust, Our soon-choked souls to fll And we forget because we must, And not because we will. Matthew Arnold dusteach-daysoul It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence. Matthew Arnold miraclemindimpossible Philistinism! - We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing. Matthew Arnold expression The study of letters is the study of the operation of human force, of human freedom and activity; the study of nature is the study of the operation of non-human forces, of human limitation and passivity. The contemplation of human force and activity tends naturally to heighten our own force and activity; the contemplation of human limits and passivity tends rather to check it. Therefore the men who have had the humanistic training have played, and yet play, so prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their prodigious ignorance of the universe. Matthew Arnold ignoranceeducationscience France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme. Matthew Arnold great-artfranceart 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! The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel what others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live. Matthew Arnold citiesmenpeace 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 ableimportantthinking But the idea of science and systematic knowledge is wanting to our whole instruction alike, and not only to that of our business class ... In nothing do England and the Continent at the present moment more strikingly differ than in the prominence which is now given to the idea of science there, and the neglect in which this idea still lies here; a neglect so great that we hardly even know the use of the word science in its strict sense, and only employ it in a secondary and incorrect sense. Matthew Arnold educationsciencelying All the live murmur of a summer's day. Matthew Arnold summer But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth. Matthew Arnold huetruthson 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 ancient-literaturesanitywant Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Matthew Arnold speakheartlove One must, I think, be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and far more still on what he reads during it. Matthew Arnold each-daymenthinking
