Quote #24
Sanity - that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
More from Matthew Arnold
- I am past thirty, and three parts iced over.
- For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high white star of Truth, There bade me ga…
- Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
- Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlo…
- How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again - thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!
- The kings of modern thought are dumb.
- Her cabin'd, ample Spirit, It flutter'd and fail'd for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death.
- 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.