Background Image

...

Is It So Small A Thing To Have Enjoyed The Sun, To Have Lived Light In The Sky, To Have Loved, To Have Thought, To Have Done?

-Matthew Arnold

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Is It So Small

Matthew Arnold

...

Is It So Small A Thing To Have Enjoyed The Sun, To Have Lived Light In The Sky, To Have Loved, To Have Thought, To Have Done?

Views: 32656

Topic

More From Matthew Arnold

And See All Sights From Pole To Pole, And Glance, And Nod, And Hustle By; And Never Once Possess Our Soul Before We Die.

It Is A Very Great Thing To Be Able To Think As You Like; But, After All, An Important Question Remains: What You Think.

Know, Man Hath All Which Nature Hath, But More, And In That More Lie All His Hopes Of Good.

Genius Is Mainly An Affair Of Energy, And Poetry Is Mainly An Affair Of Genius; Therefore A Nation Whose Spirit Is Characterized By Energy May Well Be Imminent In Poetry - And We Have Shakespeare.

To The Bible Men Will Return; And Why? Because They Cannot Do Without It.

Truth Illuminates And Gives Joy; And It Is By The Bond Of Joy, Not Of Pleasure, That Men's Spirits Are Indissolubly Held.

Fortime, Not Corydon, Hath Conquered Thee.

The Strongest Part Of A Religion Today Is Its Unconscious Poetry

God's Wisdom And God's Goodness!--ah, But Fools Mis-define Thee, Till God Knows Them No More. Wisdom And Goodness They Are God!--what Schools Have Yet So Much As Heard This Simpler Lore. This No Saint Preaches, And This No Church Rules: 'tis In The Desert, Now And Heretofore.

Years Hence, Perhaps, May Dawn An Age, More Fortunate, Alas! Than We, Which Without Hardness Will Be Sage, And Gay Without Frivolity.

Too Quick Despairer, Wherefore Wilt Thou Go? Soon Will The High Midsummer Pomps Come On, Soon Will The Musk Carnations Break And Swell.

English Civilization The Humanizing, The Bringing Into One Harmonious And Truly Humane Life, Of The Whole Body Of English Society That Is What Interests Me.

Resolve To Be Thyself: And Know That He Who Finds Himself, Loses His Misery.

Alas! Is Even Love Too Weak To Unlock The Heart, And Let It Speak?

Life Is The Application Of Noble And Profound Ideas To Life.

We Do Not What We Ought; What We Ought Not, We Do; And Lean Upon The Thought That Chance Will Bring Us Through; But Our Own Acts, For Good Or Ill, Are Mightier Powers.

I Knew The Mass Of Men Conceal'd Their Thoughts, For Fear That If Reveal'd They Would By Other Men Be Met With Blank Indifference.

Eutrapelia . "a Happy And Gracious Flexibility," Pericles Calls This Quality Of The Athenians...lucidity Of Thought, Clearness And Propriety Of Language, Freedom From Prejudice And Freedom From Stiffness, Openness Of Mind, Amiability Of Manners.

In Our English Popular Religion The Common Conception Of A Future State Of Bliss Is That Of ... A Kind Of Perfected Middle-class Home, With Labour Ended, The Table Spread, Goodness All Around, The Lost Ones Restored, Hymnody Incessant.

One Has Often Wondered Whether Upon The Whole Earth There Is Anything So Unintelligent, So Unapt To Perceive How The World Is Really Going, As An Ordinary Young Englishman Of Our Upper Class.

The Highest Reach Of Science Is, One May Say, An Inventive Power, A Faculty Of Divination, Akin To The Highest Power Exercised In Poetry; Therefore, A Nation Whose Spirit Is Characterised By Energy May Well Be Eminent In Science; And We Have Newton. Shakspeare [sic] And Newton: In The Intellectual Sphere There Can Be No Higher Names. And What That Energy, Which Is The Life Of Genius, Above Everything Demands And Insists Upon, Is Freedom; Entire Independence Of All Authority, Prescription And Routine, The Fullest Room To Expand As It Will.

Style ... Is A Peculiar Recasting And Heightening, Under A Certain Condition Of Spiritual Excitement, Of What A Man Has To Say, In Such A Manner As To Add Dignity And Distinction To It.

Yes! In The Sea Of Life Enisled, With Echoing Straits Between Us Thrown, Dotting The Shoreless Watery Wild, We Mortal Millions Live Alone.

Cruel, But Composed And Bland, Dumb, Inscrutable And Grand, So Tiberius Might Have Sat, Had Tiberius Been A Cat.

History - A Vast Mississippi Of Falsehoods

Everything In Our Political Life Tends To Hide From Us That There Is Anything Wiser Than Our Ordinary Selves.

Bald As The Bare Mountain Tops Are Bald, With A Baldness Full Of Grandeur.

And As Long As The World Lasts, All Who Want To Make Progress In Righteousness Will Come To Israel For Inspiration, As To The People Who Have Had The Sense For Righteousness Most Glowing And Strongest; And In Hearing And Reading The Words Israel Has Uttered For Us, Carers For Conduct Will Find A Glow And A Force They Could Find Nowhere Else.

Nations Are Not Truly Great Solely Because The Individuals Composing Them Are Numerous, Free, And Active; But They Are Great When These Numbers, This Freedom, And This Activity Are Employed In The Service Of An Ideal Higher Than That Of An Ordinary Man Taken By Himself.

Ah! Two Desires Toss About The Poet's Feverish Blood; One Drives Him To The World Without, And One To Solitude.

Like Driftwood Spares Which Meet And Pass Upon The Boundless Ocean-plain, So On The Sea Of Life, Alas! Man Nears Man, Meets, And Leaves Again.

The Heart Less Bounding At Emotion New, The Hope, Once Crushed, Less Quick To Spring Again.

It Is - Last Stage Of All When We Are Frozen Up Within, And Quite The Phantom Of Ourselves To Hear The World Applaud The Hollow Ghost Which Blamed The Living Man

However, If I Shall Live To Be Eighty I Shall Probably Be The Only Person Left In England Who Reads Anything But Newspapers And Scientific Publications.

The Freethinking Of One Age Is The Common Sense Of The Next.

One Thing Only Has Been Lent To Youth And Age In Common--discontent.

France, Famed In All Great Arts, In None Supreme.

Indeed There Can Be No More Useful Help For Discovering What Poetry Belongs To The Class Of The Truly Excellent, And Can Therefore Do Us Most Good, Than To Have Always In One's Mind Lines And Expressions Of The Great Masters, And To Apply Them As A Touchstone To Other Poetry.

Our Society Distributes Itself Into Barbarians, Philistines And Populace; And America Is Just Ourselves With The Barbarians Quite Left Out, And The Populace Nearly.

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.

Ah Love, Let Us Be True To One Another, Which Seems To Lie Before Us Like A Land Of Dreams; So Various, So Beautiful, So New, Hath Really Neither Joy Nor Love Nor Life.

O Born In Days When Wits Were Fresh And Clear, And Life Ran Gaily As The Sparkling Thames; Before This Strange Disease Of Modern Life, With Its Sick Hurry, Its Divided Aims, Its Heads O'ertax'd, Its Palsied Hearts, Was Rife.

The Interpretations Of Science Do Not Give Us This Intimate Sense Of Objects As The Interpretations Of Poetry Give It; They Appeal To A Limited Faculty, And Not To The Whole Man. It Is Not Linnaeus Or Cavendish Or Cuvier Who Gives Us The True Sense Of Animals, Or Water, Or Plants, Who Seizes Their Secret For Us, Who Makes Us Participate In Their Life; It Is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.

And We Forget Because We Must And Not Because We Will.

Where Great Whales Come Sailing By, Sail And Sail, With Unshut Eye, Round The World For Ever And Aye.

The Brave, Impetuous Heart Yields Everywhere To The Subtle, Contriving Head.

Home Of Lost Causes, And Forsaken Beliefs, And Unpopular Names, And Impossible Loyalties!

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.

Weary Of Myself, And Sick Of Asking What I Am, And What I Ought To Be, At This Vessel's Prow I Stand, Which Bears Me Forwards, Forwards, O'er The Starlit Sea.

Not Deep The Poet Sees, But Wide.

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?

Coleridge: Poet And Philosopher Wrecked In A Mist Of Opium.

The Future Of Poetry Is Immense, Because In Poetry, Where It Is Worthy Of Its High Destinies, Our Race, As Time Goes On, Will Find An Ever Surer And Surer Stay ... More And More Mankind Will Discover That We Have To Turn To Poetry To Interpret Life For Us, To Console Us, To Sustain Us.

And Thou, Who Didst The Stars And Sunbeams Know, Self-school'd, Self-scann'd, Self-honour'd, Self-secure, Didst Tread On Earth Unguess'd At. Better So! All Pains The Immortal Spirit Must Endure, All Weakness Which Impairs, All Griefs Which Bow, Find Their Sole Speech In That Victorious Brow.

It Does Not Try To Reach Down To The Level Of Inferior Classes; It Does Not Try To Win Them For This Or That Sect Of Its Own, With Ready-made Judgments And Watchwords Of Its Own. It Seeks To Away With Classes, To Make The Best That Has Been Taught And Known In The World Current Everywhere, To Make All Men Live In An Atmosphere Of Sweetness And Light, Where They May Use Ideas, As It Uses Them Itself, Freely--nourished, And Not Bound By Them.

The Nice Sense Of Measure Is Certainly Not One Of Nature's Gifts To Her English Children ... We Have All Of Us Yielded To Infatuation At Some Moment Of Our Lives.

Nature's Great Law, And The Law Of All Men's Minds? To Its Own Impulse Every Creature Stirs: Live By Thy Light, And Earth Will Live By Hers.

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."

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?

The Difference Between Genuine Poetry And The Poetry Of Dryden, Pope, And All Their School, Is Briefly This: Their Poetry Is Conceived And Composed In Their Wits, Genuine Poetry Is Conceived And Composed In The Soul.

For Poetry The Idea Is Everything; The Rest Is A World Of Illusion, Of Divine Illusion. Poetry Attaches Its Emotion To The Idea; The Idea Is The Fact. The Strongest Part Of Our Religion Today Is Its Unconscious Poetry.

Once Read Thy Own Breast Right, And Thou Hast Done With Fears.

Was Christ A Man Like Us?-ah! Let Us Try If We Then, Too, Can Be Such Men As He!

Without Poetry Our Science Will Appear Incomplete, And Most Of What Now Passes With Us For Religion And Philosophy Will Be Replaced By Poetry.

Science And Religion

Miracles Do Not Happen.

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!

And Each Day Brings It's Pretty Dust, Our Soon-choked Souls To Fll And We Forget Because We Must, And Not Because We Will.

What Actions Are The Most Excellent? Those, Certainly, Which Most Powerfully Appeal To The Great Primary Human Affections: To Those Elementary Feelings Which Subsist Permanently In The Race, And Which Are Independent Of Time. These Feelings Are Permanent And The Same; That Which Interests Them Is Permanent And The Same Also.

Culture Is The Passion For Sweetness And Light, And (what Is More) The Passion For Making Them Prevail.

Truth Sits Upon The Lips Of Dying Men, And Falsehood, While I Lived, Was Far From Mine.

And Thou, Who Didst The Stars And Sunbeams Know, / Self-schooled, Self-scanned, Self-honoured, Self-secure / Didst Tread On Earth Unguessed At. Better So!.

I Keep Saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, You Are As Obscure As Life Is.

Life Is Not Having And Getting, But Being And Becoming

Mind Is A Light Which The Gods Mock Us With, To Lead Those False Who Trust It.

Saw Life Steadily And Saw It Whole.

Culture Looks Beyond Machinery, Culture Hates Hatred; Culture Has One Great Passion, The Passion For Sweetness And Light.

No, No! The Energy Of Life May Be Kept On After The Grave, But Not Begun; And He Who Flagg'd Not In The Earthly Strife, From Strength To Strength Advancing--only He His Soul Well-knit, And All His Battles Won, Mounts, And That Hardly, To Eternal Life.

Be Neither Saint Nor Sophist-led, But Be A Man.

Culture Is Both An Intellectual Phenomenon And A Moral One

Fate Gave, What Chance Shall Not Control, His Sad Lucidity Of Soul.

And Long We Try In Vain To Speak And Act Our Hidden Self, And What We Say And Do Is Eloquent, Is Well -- But 'tis Not True!

Time, So Complain'd Of, Who To No One Man Shows Partiality, Brings Round To All Men Some Undimm'd Hours.

Nature, With Equal Mind, Sees All Her Sons At Play, Sees Man Control The Wind, The Wind Sweep Man Away.

The "hairy Quadruped Furnished With A Tail And, Pointed Ears, Probably Arboreal In His Habits," This Good Fellow Carried Hidden In His Nature, Apparently, Something Destined To Develop Into A Necessity For Humane Letters.

If Paris That Brief Flight Allow, My Humble Tomb Explore! It Bears: Eternity, Be Thou My Refuge! And No More.

Dreams Dawn And Fly: Friends Smile And Die, Like Spring Flowers. Our Vaunted Life Is One Long Funeral. Men Dig Graves, With Bitter Tears, For Their Dead Hopes; And All, Mazed With Doubts, And Sick With Fears, Count The Hours.

Use Your Gifts Faithfully, And They Shall Be Enlarged; Practice What You Know, And You Shall Attain To Higher Knowledge.

All Knowledge Is Interesting To A Wise Man, And The Knowledge Of Nature Is Interesting To All Men.

For Poetry The Idea Is Everything; The Rest Is A World Of Illusion.

Art Still Has Truth. Take Refuge There.

The Uppermost Idea With Hellenism Is To See Things As They Really Are; The Uppermost Ideas With Hebraism Is Conduct And Obedience.nothing Can Do Away With This Ineffaceable Difference. The Greek Quarrel With The Body And Its Desires Is, That They Hinder Right Thinking; The Hebrew Quarrel With Them Is, That They Hinder Right Acting.

Beautiful City! . . . Spreading Her Gardens To The Moonlight, And Whispering From Her Towers The Last Enchantments Of The Middle Age . . . Her Ineffable Charm. . . . Adorable Dreamer, Whose Heart Has Been So Romantic!

Culture Is To Know The Best That Has Been Said And Thought In The World.

He Spoke, And Loos'd Our Heart In Tears. He Laid Us As We Lay At Birth On The Cool Flowery Lap Of Earth.

The Discipline Of The Old Testament May Be Summed Up As A Discipline Teaching Us To Abhor And Flee From Sin; The Discipline Of The New Testament, As A Discipline Teaching Us To Die To It.

I Do Not Believe Today Everything I Believed Yesterday I Wonder Will I Believe Tomorrow Everything I Believe Today.

For What Wears Out The Life Of Mortal Men? 'tis That From Change To Change Their Being Rolls; Tis That Repeated Shocks, Again, Again, Exhaust The Energy Of Strongest Souls And Numb The Elastic Powers.

Culture Is Properly Described As The Love Of Perfection; It Is A Study Of Perfection.

Religion--that Voice Of The Deepest Human Experience.

Human Experience

The Governing Idea Of Hellenism Is Spontaneity Of Consciousness ; That Of Hebraism, Strictness Of Conscience .

Conduct Is Three-fourths Of Our Life And Its Largest Concern.

Still Bent To Make Some Port He Knows Not Where, Still Standing For Some False Impossible Shore.

The Bloom Is Gone, And With The Bloom Go I.

Waiting For The Spark From Heaven To Fall.

What Is It To Grow Old? Is It To Lose The Glory Of The Form, The Lustre Of The Eye? Is It For Beauty To Forego Her Wreath? Yes; But Not This Alone.

Weep Bitterly Over The Dead, For He Is Worthy, And Then Comfort Thyself; Drive Heaviness Away: Thou Shall Not Do Him Good, But Hurt Thyself.

Poetry Interprets In Two Ways: It Interprets By Expressing, With Magical Felicity, The Physiognomy And Movements Of The Outward World; And It Interprets By Expressing, With Inspired Conviction, The Ideas And Laws Of The Inward World Of Man's Moral And Spiritual Nature. In Other Words, Poetry Is Interpretative Both By Having Natural Magic In It, And By Having Moral Profundity.

But The Idea Of Science And Systematic Knowledge Is Wanting To Our Whole Instruction Alike, And Not Only To That Of Our Business Class ... In Nothing Do England And The Continent At The Present Moment More Strikingly Differ Than In The Prominence Which Is Now Given To The Idea Of Science There, And The Neglect In Which This Idea Still Lies Here; A Neglect So Great That We Hardly Even Know The Use Of The Word Science In Its Strict Sense, And Only Employ It In A Secondary And Incorrect Sense.

Sad Patience, Too Near Neighbour To Despair.

Wandering Between Two Worlds, One Dead, The Other Powerless To Be Born.

Coldly, Sadly Descends The Autumn Evening. The Field Strewn With Its Dank Yellow Drifts Of Wither'd Leaves, And The Elms, Fade Into Dimness Apace, Silent; Hardly A Shout From A Few Boys Late At Their Play!

Is It So Small A Thing To Have Enjoyed The Sun, To Have Lived Light In The Sky, To Have Loved, To Have Thought, To Have Done?

Joy Comes And Goes, Hope Ebbs And Flows Like The Wave; Change Doth Unknit The Tranquil Strength Of Men. Love Tends Life A Little Grace, A Few Sad Smiles; And Then, Both Are Laid In One Cold Place, In The Grave.

And Amongst Us One, Who Most Has Suffer'd, Takes Dejectedly His Seat Upon The Intellectual Throne.

All The Biblical Miracles Will At Last Disappear With The Progress Of Science.

Philistine Must Have Originally Meant, In The Mind Of Those Who Invented The Nickname, A Strong, Dogged, Unenlightened Opponent Of The Chosen People, Of The Children Of The Light.

Goethe In Weimar Sleeps, And Greece, Long Since, Saw Byron 's Struggle Cease.

The Pursuit Of Perfection, Then, Is The Pursuit Of Sweetness And Light.... He Who Works For Sweetness And Light United, Works To Make Reason And The Will Of God Prevail.

The Need Of Expansion Is As Genuine An Instinct In Man As The Need In A Plant For The Light, Or The Need In Man Himself For Going Upright. The Love Of Liberty Is Simply The Instinct In Man For Expansion.

Oxus, Forgetting The Bright Speed He Had In His High Mountain Cradle In Pamere, A Foiled Circuitous Wanderertill At Last The Longed-for Dash Of Waves Is Heard, And Wide His Luminous Home Of Waters Opens, Bright And Tranquil, From Whose Floor The New-bathed Stars Emerge, And Shine Upon The Aral Sea.

The Same Heart Beats In Every Human Breast.

The Sea Of Faith Was Once, Too, At The Full, And Round Earth's Shore Lay Like The Folds Of A Bright Girdle Furled. But Now I Only Hear Its Melancholy, Long, Withdrawing Roar, Retreating, To The Breath Of The Night-wind, Down The Vast Edges Drear And Naked Shingles Of The World.

Children Of Men! The Unseen Power, Whose Eye Forever Doth Accompany Mankind, Hath Look'd On No Religion Scornfully That Men Did Ever Find.

Sand-strewn Caverns, Cool And Deep, Where The Winds Are All Asleep; Where The Spent Lights Quiver And Gleam; Where The Salt Weed Sways In The Stream.

Religion Is Ethics Heightened, Enkindled, Lit Up By Feeling

For The Creation Of A Masterwork Of Literature Two Powers Must Concur, The Power Of The Man And The Power Of The Moment, And The Man Is Not Enough Without The Moment.

They... Who Await. No Gifts From Chance, Have Conquered Fate.

Others Abide Our Question. Thou Art Free. We Ask And Ask. Thou Smilest And Art Still, Out-topping Knowledge.

Most Men Eddy About Here And There-eat And Drink, Chatter And Love And Hate, Gather And Squander, Are Raised Aloft, Are Hurled In The Dust, Striving Blindly, Achieving Nothing; And Then They Die- Perish;-and No One Asks Who Or What They Have Been.

I Am Bound By My Own Definition Of Criticism : A Disinterested Endeavour To Learn And Propagate The Best That Is Known And Thought In The World.

O Strong Soul, By What Shore Tarriest Thou Now? For That Force, Surely, Has Not Been Left Vain!

We Cannot Kindle When We Will The Fire Which In The Heart Resides, The Spirit Bloweth And Is Still, In Mystery Our Soul Abides: But Tasks In Hours Of Insight Will'd Can Be Through Hours Of Gloom Fulfill'd.

Thou Waitest For The Spark From Heaven! And We, Light Half-believers Of Our Casual Creeds, Who Never Deeply Felt, Nor Clearly Will'd, Whose Insight Never Has Borne Fruit In Deeds, Whose Vague Resolves Never Have Been Fulfill'd; For Whom Each Year We See Breeds New Beginnings, Disappointments New; Who Hesitate And Falter Life Away, And Lose To-morrow The Ground Won To-day Ah! Do Not We, Wanderer! Await It Too?

Nor Bring, To See Me Cease To Live, Some Doctor Full Of Phrase And Fame, To Shake His Sapient Head, And Give The Ill He Cannot Cure A Name.

Sanity -- That Is The Great Virtue Of The Ancient Literature; The Want Of That Is The Great Defect Of The Modern, In Spite Of Its Variety And Power.

Ancient Literature

We Must Hold Fast To The Austere But True Doctrine As To What Really Governs Politics And Saves Or Destroys States. Having In Mind Things True, Things Elevated, Things Just, Things Pure, Things Amiable, Things Of Good Report; Having These In Mind, Studying And Loving These, Is What Saves States.

The Word "god" Is Used In Most Cases As By No Means A Term Of Science Or Exact Knowledge, But A Term Of Poetry And Eloquence, A Term Thrown Out, So To Speak, As A Not Fully Grasped Object Of The Speaker's Consciousness -- A Literary Term, In Short; And Mankind Mean Different Things By It As Their Consciousness Differs.

Philistinism! - We Have Not The Expression In English. Perhaps We Have Not The Word Because We Have So Much Of The Thing.

Change Doth Unknit The Tranquil Strength Of Men.

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? I Knew The Mass Of Men Conceal'd Their Thoughts, For Fear That If Reveal'd They Would By Other Men Be Met With Blank Indifference, Or With Blame Reproved; I Knew They Lived And Moved Trick'd In Disguises, Alien To The Rest Of Men, And Alien To Themselves - And Yet The Same Heart Beats In Every Human Breast!

The Sea Is Calm Tonight. The Tide Is Full, The Moon Lies Fair Upon The Straits;- On The French Coast The Light Gleams And Is Gone; The Cliffs Of England Stand, Glimmering And Vast, Out In The Tranquil Bay.

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.

Strew On Her Roses, Roses, And Never A Spray Of Yew! In Quiet She Reposes; Ah, Would That I Did Too!

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 'twere Done. Not Till The Hours Of Light Return All We Have Built Do We Discern.

Tis Not To See The World As From A Height, With Rapt Prophetic Eyes, And Heart Profoundly Stirred; And Weep, And Feel The Fullness Of The Past, The Years That Are Not More.

Man Errs Not That He Deems His Welfare His True Aim, He Errs Because He Dreams The World Does But Exist That Welfare To Bestow.

The Bent Of Our Time Is Towards Science, Towards Knowing Things As They Are.

Now, The Whole World Hears Or Shall Hear,--surely Shall Hear, At The Last, Though Men Delay, And Doubt, And Faint, And Fail,-- That Promise Faithful:--"fear Not, Little Flock! It Is Your Father's Will And Joy, To Give To You, The Kingdom"!

If An Historian Be An Unbeliever In All Heroism, If He Be A Man Who Brings Every Thing Down To The Level Of A Common Mediocrity, Depend Upon It, The Truth Is Not Found In Such A Writer.

Truth Sits Upon The Lips Of Dying Men.

To Have The Sense Of Creative Activity Is The Great Happiness And The Great Proof Of Being Alive.

Hither And Thither Spins The Wind-borne Mirroring Soul, A Thousand Glimpses Wins, And Never Sees A Whole.

Culture, The Acquainting Ourselves With The Best That Has Been Known And Said In The World, And Thus With The History Of The Human Spirit.

Art And Culture

At The Present Moment Two Things About The Christian Religion Must Surely Be Clear To Anybody With Eyes In His Head. One Is, That Men Cannot Do Without It; The Other, That They Cannot Do With It As It Is.

The Study Of Letters Is The Study Of The Operation Of Human Force, Of Human Freedom And Activity; The Study Of Nature Is The Study Of The Operation Of Non-human Forces, Of Human Limitation And Passivity. The Contemplation Of Human Force And Activity Tends Naturally To Heighten Our Own Force And Activity; The Contemplation Of Human Limits And Passivity Tends Rather To Check It. Therefore The Men Who Have Had The Humanistic Training Have Played, And Yet Play, So Prominent A Part In Human Affairs, In Spite Of Their Prodigious Ignorance Of The Universe.

The True Meaning Of Religion Is Thus Not Simply Morality, But Morality Touched By Emotion.

Morality Represents For Everybody A Thoroughly Definite And Ascertained Idea: The Idea Of Human Conduct Regulated In A Certain Manner.

Good Poetry Does Undoubtedly Tend To Form The Soul And Character; It Tends To Beget A Love Of Beauty And Of Truth In Alliance Together, It Suggests, However Indirectly, High And Noble Principles Of Action, And It Inspires The Emotion So Helpful In Making Principles Operative.

Below The Surface Stream, Shallow And Light, Of What We Say And Feel Below The Stream, As Light, Of What We Think We Feel, There Flows With Noiseless Current, Strong, Obscure And Deep, The Central Stream Of What We Feel Indeed.

The Power Of The Latin Classic Is In Character , That Of The Greek Is In Beauty . Now Character Is Capable Of Being Taught, Learnt, And Assimilated: Beauty Hardly.

But Thou, My Son, Study To Make Prevail One Colour In Thy Life, The Hue Of Truth.

Come To Me In My Dreams, And Then By Day I Shall Be Well Again. For Then The Night Will More Than Pay The Hopeless Longing Of The Day.

All Pains The Immortal Spirit Must Endure, All Weakness That Impairs, All Griefs That Bow, Find Their Sole Voice In That Victorious Brow.

Physician Of The Iron Age, Goethe Has Done His Pilgrimage. He Took The Suffering Human Race, He Read Each Wound, Each Weakness Clear -- And Struck His Finger On The Place, And Said -- Thou Ailest Here, And Here.

Men Of Culture Are The True Apostles Of Equality

Calm's Not Life's Crown, Though Calm Is Well.

Youth Dreams A Bliss On This Side Of Death. It Dreams A Rest, If Not More Deep, More Grateful Than This Marble Sleep; It Hears A Voice Within It Tell: Calm's Not Life's Crown, Though Calm Is Well. 'tis All Perhaps Which Man Acquires, But 'tis Not What Our Youth Desires.

Grey Time-worn Marbles Hold The Pure Muses. In Their Cool Gallery, By Yellow Tiber, They Still Look Fair.

The Grand Stye Arises In Poetry, When A Noble Nature, Poetically Gifted, Treats With Simplicity Or With Severity A Serious Subject.

Our Inequality Materializes Our Upper Class, Vulgarizes Our Middle Class, Brutalizes Our Lower Class.

Poetry Is Simply The Most Beautiful, Impressive, And Widely Effective Mode Of Saying Things.

But There Remains The Question: What Righteousness Really Is. The Method And Secret And Sweet Reasonableness Of Jesus.

But So Many Books Thou Readest, But So Many Schemes Thou Breedest, But So Many Wishes Feedest, That Thy Poor Head Almost Turns.

Protestantism Has The Method Of Jesus With His Secret Too Much Left Out Of Mind; Catholicism Has His Secret With His Method Too Much Left Out Of Mind; Neither Has His Unerring Balance, His Intuition, His Sweet Reasonableness. But Both Have Hold Of A Great Truth, And Get From It A Great Power.

The Eternal Not Ourselves That Makes For Righteousness.

Have Something To Say, And Say It As Clearly As You Can. That Is The Only Secret.

The Best Poetry Will Be Found To Have A Power Of Forming, Sustaining, And Delighting Us, As Nothing Else Can.

On Sundays, At The Matin-chime, The Alpine Peasants, Two And Three, Climb Up Here To Pray; Burghers And Dames, At Summer's Prime, Ride Out To Church From Chamberry, Dight With Mantles Gay, But Else It Is A Lonely Time Round The Church Of Brou.

The Sophist Sneers: Fool, Take Thy Pleasure, Right Or Wrong! The Pious Wail: Forsake A World These Sophists Throng! Be Neither Saint Nor Sophist-led, But Be A Man.

Business Could Not Make Dull, Nor Passion Wild; Who Saw Life Steadily, And Saw It Whole.

Greatness Is A Spiritual Condition.

Most Men In A Brazen Prison Live, Where, In The Sun's Hot Eye, With Heads Bent O'er Their Toil, They Languidly Their Lives To Some Unmeaning Taskwork Give, Dreaming Of Nought Beyond Their Prison-wall.

Culture, Then, Is A Study Of Perfection, And Perfection Which Insists On Becoming Something Rather Than In Having Something, In An Inward Condition Of The Mind And Spirit, Not In An Outward Set Of Circumstances.

That Which In England We Call The Middle Class Is In America Virtually The Nation.

Now The Great Winds Shoreward Blow Now The Salt Tides Seaward Flow Now The Wild White Horses Play Champ And Chafe And Toss In The Spray.

Not A Having And A Resting, But A Growing And A Becoming, Is The Character Of Perfection As Culture Conceives It.

The Kings Of Modern Thought Are Dumb.

Come, Dear Children, Let Us Away; Down And Away Below!

All The Live Murmur Of A Summer's Day.

Unquiet Souls. In The Dark Fermentation Of Earth, In The Never Idle Workshop Of Nature, In The Eternal Movement, Yea Shall Find Yourselves Again.

It Is Almost Impossible To Exaggerate The Proneness Of The Human Mind To Take Miracles As Evidence, And To Seek For Miracles As Evidence.

The Pursuit Of Perfection, Then, Is The Pursuit Of Sweetness And Light.

Who Hesitate And Falter Life Away, And Lose Tomorrow The Ground Won Today.

This Strange Disease Of Modern Life, With Its Sick Hurry, Its Divided Aims.

Spare Me The Whispering, Crowded Room, The Friends Who Come And Gape And Go, The Ceremonious Air Of Gloom - All, Which Makes Death A Hideous Show.

If One Were Searching For The Best Means To Efface And Kill In A Whole Nation The Discipline Of Self-respect, The Feeling For What Is Elevated, He Could Do No Better Than Take The American Newspapers.

One Must, I Think, Be Struck More And More The Longer One Lives, To Find How Much In Our Present Society A Man's Life Of Each Day Depends For Its Solidity And Value Upon Whether He Reads During That Day, And Far More Still On What He Reads During It.

If There Ever Comes A Time When The Women Of The World Come Together Purely And Simply For The Benefit Of Mankind, It Will Be A Force Such As The World Has Never Known.

What Shelter To Grow Ripe Is Ours? What Leisure To Grow Wise?

Nothing Could Moderate, In The Bosom Of The Great English Middle Class, Their Passionate, Absorbing, Almost Blood-thirsty Clinging To Life.

Trending Author

Category