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Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold Biography

Poet

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“Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: 'Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”

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Book:Culture and Anarchy
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“Is it so small a thing To have enjoy'd the sun, To have liv'd light in the spring, To have lov'd, to have thought, to have done; To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes; That we must feign a bliss Of doubtful future date, And while we dream on this Lose our present state, And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? Empedocles on Etna: Act I, Scene II”

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Book:Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold: Volume II of II
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“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 joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by Gods, In a mightier order, The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven. But now, ye kindle Your lonely, cold-shining lights, Unwilling lingerers In 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 not Weary with our weariness.”

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Book:Empedocles On Etna And Other Poems
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“In our political system everybody is comforted. Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the influence of the Barbarians, and who depend on their favour, sing the praises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be said of them. With Mr. Tennyson, they celebrate 'the great broad−shouldered genial Englishman,' with his 'sense of duty,' his 'reverence for the laws,' and his 'patient force,' who saves us from the 'revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a schoolboy's barring out,' which upset other and less broad−shouldered nations. Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how 'all the world knows that the great middle class of this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done,' and congratulate them on their 'earnest good sense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to conventional illusions their true value.' Our guides who look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that 'theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action.”

CultureClassBarbariansPopulismPhilistinesPhilistinismPopulacePandering
Book:Culture and Anarchy
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“Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of the community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile class, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and prepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they make no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but slide easily off their minds. For instance, when the Reform League orators inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they are addressed, or awaken any thought or self−examination in them. Again, when our aristocratical baronet describes the Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not much set the Philistines and the Populace thinking. Or when Mr. Lowe calls the Populace drunken and venal, he so evidently calls them this in an agony of apprehension for his Philistine or middle−class Parliament, which has done so many great and heroic works, and is now threatened with mixture and debasement, that the Populace do not lay his words seriously to heart.”

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Author:Matthew Arnold
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“Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”

PeopleWayGivingMindLooksLiteratureVoiceWealthPleasureConditionsAmountHabitMouthsMannersToneFurniture
Book:Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings
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“Only--but this is rare-- When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-- 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 life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.”

KnowsMenWorldHeartMeanFeelingsHandsEyeLyingLostVoiceHoursSunClearShotsFlowEarsBelovedToneBreastsOur WorldInwardBreezePulseMeadowsBoltsCaressJadedGlare
Book:Dover Beach and Other Poems
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