WIST Quotations

Arnold, Matthew -- “A Summer Night,” l. 68-9 (1852)

Dave — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:25:07 +0000

Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false impossible shore.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“A Summer Night,” l. 68-9 (1852)

Arnold, Matthew -- “Dover Beach,” l. 35-37 (1867)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“Dover Beach,” l. 35-37 (1867)

Arnold, Matthew -- “Morality,” ll. 7-12 (1852)

Dave — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:01:19 +0000

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) English poet and critic
“Morality,” ll. 7-12 (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- “Resignation,” The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1848)

Dave — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:33:39 +0000

Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from chance, have conquered fate.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“Resignation,” The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1848)
(Source)

Arnold, Matthew -- “Rugby Chapel,” st. 6 (1867)

Dave — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:17:52 +0000

What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?—
Most men eddy about
Here and there—eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurl’d in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and, then they die—
Perish; and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell’d,
Foam’d for a moment, and gone.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“Rugby Chapel,” st. 6 (1867)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” st. 12, Fraser’s Magazine (1855-04)

Dave — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 17:39:36 +0000

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire,
Show’d me the high white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire;
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What doest thou in this living tomb?

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” st. 12, Fraser’s Magazine (1855-04)
(Source)

On his tour of a seventeenth-century monastery in Grenoble, in the French Alps, the headquarters of the Carthusian order of Catholic monks .

Arnold, Matthew -- “Stanzas in Memory of the Author of ‘Obermann'”, s. 34 (1852)

Dave — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:17:24 +0000

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) English poet and critic
“Stanzas in Memory of the Author of ‘Obermann'”, s. 34 (1852)

Arnold, Matthew -- “The Buried Life,” st. 6 (1852)

Dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:42:59 +0000

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) English poet and critic
“The Buried Life,” st. 6 (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- “Written in Emerson’s Essays” (1849).

Dave — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:33:14 +0000

Yet the will is free;
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful;
The seeds of god-like power are in us still;
Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
“Written in Emerson’s Essays” (1849).

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- Culture and Anarchy, ch. 1 “Sweetness and Light” (1869)

Dave — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:28:58 +0000

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Culture and Anarchy, ch. 1 “Sweetness and Light” (1869)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- Democracy (1861)

Dave — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:40:08 +0000

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) English poet and critic
Democracy (1861)

Arnold, Matthew -- Democracy (1861)

Dave — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:03:13 +0000

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) English poet and critic
Democracy (1861)

Arnold, Matthew -- Empedocles on Etna, Act 1, sc. 2, ll. 238-242 (1852)

Dave — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:03:48 +0000

We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through;
But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Empedocles on Etna, Act 1, sc. 2, ll. 238-242 (1852)
(Source)

Arnold, Matthew -- Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Dave — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:00:35 +0000

The sophist sneers: Fool, take
Thy pleasure, right or wrong!
The pious wail: Forsake
A world these sophists throng!
Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Dave — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:06:16 +0000

Thou hast no right to bliss.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Dave — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:05:45 +0000

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- God and the Bible (1875)

Dave — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:16:52 +0000

The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
God and the Bible (1875)

Arnold, Matthew -- God and the Bible (1875)

Dave — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 16:09:02 +0000

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
God and the Bible (1875)

See Beecher.

Arnold, Matthew -- Literature and Dogma, ch. 1 (1873)

Dave — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:31:01 +0000

Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Literature and Dogma, ch. 1 (1873)

Arnold, Matthew -- Literature and Dogma, preface (1873)

Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:38:58 +0000

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Literature and Dogma, preface (1873)

Arnold, Matthew -- Literature and Dogma, Preface (1873)

Dave — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 18:23:16 +0000

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Literature and Dogma, Preface (1873)
(Source)

Arnold, Matthew -- Morality, st. 1 (1852)

Dave — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:57:49 +0000

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) English poet and critic
Morality, st. 1 (1852)

Full text.

Arnold, Matthew -- St. Paul and Protestantism (1870)

Dave — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:55:48 +0000

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.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
St. Paul and Protestantism (1870)

Arnold, Matthew -- Stanzas in Memory of the Author of “Obermann” (1852), st. 24.

Dave — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:11:07 +0000

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) English poet and critic
Stanzas in Memory of the Author of “Obermann” (1852), st. 24.