Matthew Arnold Quotes on Life
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I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.
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Yes: in the sea of life enisl'd, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.
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But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us, to know Whence our lives come and where they go.
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We, in some unknown Power's employ, Move on a rigorous line; Can neither, when we will, enjoy, Nor, when we will, resign.
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Her cabin'd, ample Spirit, It flutter'd and fail'd for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death.
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Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
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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 forlorn.
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Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.
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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.
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Singing, 'Here came a mortal, But faithless was she: And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea.'
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Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.
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The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy.
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Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
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What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?- Most men eddy about Here and there-eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and, then they die- Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, Foam'd for a moment, and gone.
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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.