Matthew Arnold - Soul Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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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
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.

Matthew Arnold
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.

Matthew Arnold
Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative.

Matthew Arnold
For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls; Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls And numb the elastic powers.

Matthew Arnold
For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

Matthew Arnold
And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die.

Matthew Arnold
Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.

Matthew Arnold
Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.

Matthew Arnold
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
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.

Matthew Arnold
Be his [Sophocles']
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild:
Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

Matthew Arnold
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
O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!

Matthew Arnold
Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother's train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.

Matthew Arnold
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful: The seeds of godlike power are in us still: Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

Matthew Arnold
Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.

Matthew Arnold
The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.

Matthew Arnold
But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok'd souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.

Matthew Arnold