Quotes by Matthew Arnold

“Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully”

“To the degree were not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.”

“The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.”

“We live in a rainbow of chaos.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Things are only impossible until theyre not.”

“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go.

Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessels prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, oer the starlit sea.

Only--but this is rare--When a beloved hand is laid in ours,When, jaded with the rush and glareOf the interminable hours, Our eyes can in anothers eyes read clear,When our world-deafend earIs by the tones of a loved voice caressd--A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.A man becomes aware of his lifes flow,And hears its winding murmur; and he seesThe meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

Come to me in my dreams, and thenBy day I shall be well again!For so the night will more than payThe hopeless longings of the day.

Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.

But often, in the worlds most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course.

Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing: There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she!She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.(from poem The Forsaken Merman)

Alas, is even Love too weak to unlock the heart and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel?

The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits;- on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Waiting from heaven for the spark to fall.

, And you, ye stars,Who slowly begin to marshal,As of old, the fields of heaven,Your distant, melancholy lines!Have you, too, survived yourselves?Are you, too, what I fear to become?You, too, once lived;You, too, moved joyfullyAmong august companions,In an older world, peopled by Gods,In a mightier order,The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.But now, ye kindleYour lonely, cold-shining lights,Unwilling lingerersIn the heavenly wilderness,For a younger, ignoble world;And renew, by necessity,Night after night your courses,In echoing, unneared silence,Above a race you know not—Uncaring and undelighted,Without friend and without home;Weary like us, though notWeary with our weariness.

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire,Showed me the high, white star of Truth,There bade me gaze, and there aspire.Even now their whispers pierce the gloomWhat dost thou in this living tomb?

For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimmd its fire, Showd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb?