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

01Undated

It is 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.

Matthew Arnold / quote

02Undated

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

Matthew Arnold / quote

03Undated

Poetry is simply the most beautiful impressive and widely effective mode of saying things.

Matthew Arnold / quote

04Undated

The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children ... we have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment of our lives.

Matthew Arnold / quote

05Undated

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?

Matthew Arnold / quote

06Undated

Resolve to be thyself and know that who finds himself loses his misery.

Matthew Arnold / quote

07Undated

They who await no gifts from chance have conquered fate.

Matthew Arnold / quote

08Undated

We forget because we must And not because we will.

Matthew Arnold / quote

09Undated

Nature with equal mind sees all her sons at play sees man control the wind the wind sweep man away.

Matthew Arnold / quote

10Undated

The same heart beats in every human breast.

Matthew Arnold / quote

11Undated

Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald with a baldness full of grandeur.

Matthew Arnold / quote

12Undated

Resolve to be thyself ... he who finds himself loses his misery!

Matthew Arnold / quote

13Undated

Resolve to be thyself and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.

Matthew Arnold / quote

14Undated

The pursuit of the perfect then is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

Matthew Arnold / quote

15Undated

This strange disease of modern life with its sick hurry its divided aims.

Matthew Arnold / quote

16Undated

Who hesitate and falter life away and lose tomorrow the ground won today.

Matthew Arnold / quote

17Undated

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.

Matthew Arnold / quote

18Undated

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

Matthew Arnold / quote

19Undated

To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.

Matthew Arnold / quote

20Undated

Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

Matthew Arnold / quote

21Undated

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Matthew Arnold / quote

22Undated

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

Matthew Arnold / quote