16 Matthew Arnold Quotes on Life

Matthew Arnold quotes on life

1. I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.

4. 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.

10. Yes: in the sea of life enisl'd, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

12. 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.

17. We, in some unknown Power's employ, Move on a rigorous line; Can neither, when we will, enjoy, Nor, when we will, resign.

20. Her cabin'd, ample Spirit, It flutter'd and fail'd for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death.

22. Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.

26. 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.

39. Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

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.

52. Singing, 'Here came a mortal, But faithless was she: And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea.'

53. Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

54. The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy.

60. Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.

103. 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.

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.