Quote #114
The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.
More from Matthew Arnold
- Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
- The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
- The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.
- Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.
- The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the …
- A beautiful and ineffectual angel [Shelley], beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.
- Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that w…
- It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his po…