The voices / 70 fragments

Matthew Arnold

1822 AD — 1888 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

Author and source reference ↗

▷ Play this voice Search within this voice ↗Place in time ↗knowledge life time mind faith learning love courage

Historical source references

Shakespeare
Requiescat
Growing Old
Memorial Verses
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
Essays in Criticism
Culture and Anarchy
Printed citation: Matthew Arnold
Page 127 · printed citation: Matthew Arnold
Page 152 · printed citation: M
Page 226 · printed citation: M
Page 236 · printed citation: Matthew Arnold (Lines written in Kensington Gardens)
Page 265 · printed citation: Matthew Arnold
Printed page 12 · quotation 22 · Matthew Arnold · Growing Old
Printed page 315 · quotation 14 · Matthew Arnold · The Divinity St
Complete signed selection 555; printed byline: Matthew Arnold; New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1901

Archive entries

01c. 1855 AD

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

Matthew Arnold / quote

02c. 1855 AD

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

Matthew Arnold / quote

03c. 1855 AD

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

Matthew Arnold / quote

04c. 1855 AD

Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power?

Matthew Arnold / quote

05c. 1855 AD

Wandering between two worlds,—one dead, The other powerless to be born.

Matthew Arnold / quote

06c. 1855 AD

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

Matthew Arnold / quote

07c. 1855 AD

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.

Matthew Arnold / quote

08c. 1855 AD

There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, "To make reason and the will of God prevail."

Matthew Arnold / quote

09Undated

Criticism is a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

Matthew Arnold / quote

10Undated

Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.

Matthew Arnold / quote

11Undated

Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.

Matthew Arnold / quote

12Undated

It is matter of the commonest remark how a timid man who is in love will show courage, or an indolent man will show diligence.

Matthew Arnold / quote

13Undated

Poetry interprets in two ways: by expressing with magical felicity the physiognomy and movements of the outer world; and by expressing with inward conviction the ideas and laws of the inward.

Matthew Arnold / quote

14Undated

Powerful attachment will give a man spirit and confidence which he could by no means call up or command of himself; and in this mood he can do wonders which would not be possible to him without it.

Matthew Arnold / quote

15Undated

Sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men.

Matthew Arnold / quote

16Undated

Sin is not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of.

Matthew Arnold / quote

17Undated

Tasks in hours of insight willed, / In hours of gloom must be fulfilled.

Matthew Arnold / quote

18Undated

The way, truth, and life have been found in Christianity, and will not now be found outside of it.

Matthew Arnold / quote

19Undated

Thinking about sin, beyond what is indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time.

Matthew Arnold / quote

20Undated

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 / quote

21Undated

To popular religion, the real kingdom of God is the New Jerusalem with its jaspers and emeralds; righteousness and peace and joy are only the kingdom of God figuratively.

Matthew Arnold / quote

22Undated

Wherever there is cupidity, there the blessing of the Gospel cannot rest. The actual poor, therefore, may altogether fail to be objects of that blessing, the actual rich may be the objects of it in the highest degree.

Matthew Arnold / quote

23Undated

Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

Matthew Arnold / quote

24Undated

Without some strong motive to the contrary, men united by the pursuit of a clearly defined common aim of irresistible attractiveness naturally coalesce; and since they coalesce naturally, they are clearly right in coalescing and find their advantage in it.

Matthew Arnold / quote