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
strong thinking light
Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.
thinking ideas differences
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.
thinking important able
It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.
men thinking each-day
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.
enjoyed light lived small
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?
cool crossing fingers slow stream swings thames thy trailing
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe, / Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, / As the slow punt swings round.
armies clash confused ignorant night plain struggle swept
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night
itself society
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace.
culture love origin properly study
Culture is. . . properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
attic glory life mellow saw
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: / The mellow glory of the Attic stage.
forth lost
Friends who set forth at our side, / Falter, are lost in the storm. / We, we only, are left!
floor shine stars whose
From whose floor the new-bathed stars / Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
brings dust forget memory petty souls
But each day brings its petty dust our soon-choked souls to fill, and we forget because we must, and not because we will.
gives light notion perverse philistine resistance suits
Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children; and therein it specially suits our middle-class.