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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
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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.
Matthew Arnold
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To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
Matthew Arnold
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The discipline of the Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to it.
Matthew Arnold
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Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are not more.
Matthew Arnold
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Man errs not that he deems His welfare his true aim, He errs because he dreams The world does but exist that welfare to bestow.
Matthew Arnold
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Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.
Matthew Arnold
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Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.
Matthew Arnold
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Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can.
Matthew Arnold
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Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity.
Matthew Arnold
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The word "God" is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness -- a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.
Matthew Arnold
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One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class.
Matthew Arnold
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On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou.
Matthew Arnold
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Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore.
Matthew Arnold
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Matthew Arnold
Creative Commons
Born:
December 24, 1822
Died:
April 15, 1888
(aged 65)
Bio:
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools.
Known for:
Dover Beach (1867)
Culture and Anarchy (1869)
Matthew Arnold's essays in criticism (1865)
Study of Poetry
Most used words:
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Matthew Arnold on Wikipedia
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