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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  Matthew Arnold 1822-1888 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Matthew Arnold 1822-1888 John Bartlett

 
1
    Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
          Shakespeare.
2
    Strew on her roses, roses,
  And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
  Ah, would that I did too!
          Requiescat.
3
    To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
          Growing old.
4
    Time may restore us in his course
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?
          Memorial Verses.
5
    Wandering between two worlds,—one dead,
The other powerless to be born.
          Stanzas from the grande Chartreuse.
6
    The kings of modern thought are dumb.
          Stanzas from the grande Chartreuse.
7
    Calm Soul of all things! make it mine
  To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a place of thine,
  Man did not make, and can not mar.
          Lines written in Kensington Gardens.
8
    We, in some unknown Power’s employ,
  Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
  Nor, when we will, resign.
          Stanzas in Memory of the Author of “Obermann.”
9
      And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
  Where ignorant armies clash by night.
          Dover Beach.
10
    With aching hands and bleeding feet
  We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
  Of the long day and wish ’t were done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.
          Morality.
11
    This strange disease of modern life.
          The Scholar Gypsy.
12
    Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.
          Mycerinus.
13
    Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from chance, have conquered Fate.
          Resignation.
14
    Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans and swans are geese!
          The last Word.
15
    The same heart beats in every human breast.
          The buried Life.
16
    To thee only God granted
  A heart ever new:
To all always open;
  To all always true.
          Switzerland. Parting.
17
    Radiant with ardour divine!
Beacons of Hope ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
          Rugby Chapel.
18
    Peace, peace is what I seek and public calm,
Endless extinction of unhappy hates.
          Merope.
19
    With women the heart argues, not the mind.
          Merope.
20
    We do not what we ought,
  What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
  That Chance will bring us through.
          Empedocles on Etna.
21
          The will is free;
Strong is the soul, and wise and beautiful;
The seeds of godlike power are in us still;
Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!
          Written in Emerson’s Essays.
22
    The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.
          From Culture and Anarchy.
23
      The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
          From Culture and Anarchy.
24
      There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, “To make reason and the will of God prevail.”
          From Culture and Anarchy.
25
      Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.
          Essays in Criticism. Heinrich Heine.
26
    The vast Mississippi of falsehood.
          History.
27
    Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.
          Self-Dependence.