6 Matthew Arnold Quotes on Criticism

Matthew Arnold quotes on criticism

48. What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.

77. Critical power...tends to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail.

81. I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

86. The great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay.

117. A beautiful and ineffectual angel [Shelley], beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.

118. 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 powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life - to the question: How to live.