Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnoldwas an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 December 1822
crowns calm tranquility
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
dream wall work
Most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
cat dumb might
Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.
voice leaving warning
The eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly before leaving the world, a warning cry against the "Anglo- Saxon contagion.
life eye taught-us
When Byron's eyes were shut in death, We bow'd our head and held our breath. He taught us little; but our soul Had felt his like a thunder roll. . . . We watch'd the fount of fiery life Which serv'd for that Titanic life.
intellectual culture moral
Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one
men culture apostles
Men of culture are the true apostles of equality
ears letters tails
The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
dream law soul
Thought and science follow their own law of development; they are slowly elaborated in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in what Shakespeare calls ...The prophetic soul, Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
atheist biblical miracle
All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.
class justice natural
Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
sun aging enjoyed
Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun...
character perfection personality
Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.
happiness joy world
The world hath failed to impart the joy our youth forebodes; failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.