Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnoldwas an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 December 1822
spiritual greatness conditions
Greatness is a spiritual condition.
class justice natural
Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
atheist biblical miracle
All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.
dream law soul
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.
ears letters tails
The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
time men rivers
A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.
god fate air
We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear; With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.
nature writing hands
Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power.
teacher stars white
For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire.
rose yew quiet
Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!
god law tendencies
For science, God is simply the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.
patience despair neighbour
Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.
today religion-today unconscious
The strongest part of a religion today is its unconscious poetry
culture bishops reason
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."