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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.

-Matthew Arnold

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We Must Hold Fast

Matthew Arnold

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

Inequality Has The Natural And Necessary Effect, Under The Present Circumstances, Of Materializing Our Upper Class, Vulgarizing Our Middle Class, And Brutalizing Our Lower Class.

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

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

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.

All This I Bear, For, What I Seek, I Know: Peace, Peace Is What I Seek, And Public Calm: Endless Extinction Of Unhappy Hates.

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.

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

The Eloquent Voice Of Our Century Uttered, Shortly Before Leaving The World, A Warning Cry Against The "anglo- Saxon Contagion.

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

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

Say, Has Some Wet Bird-haunted English Lawn Lent It The Music Of Its Trees At Dawn?

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.

We, Peopling The Void Air, Make Gods To Whom To Impute The Ills We Ought To Bear; With God And Fate To Rail At, Suffering Easily.

Life Is Not Having And Getting, But Being And Becoming

Ah, Love, Let Us Be True To One Another!

Is It So Small A Thing To Have Enjoyed The Sun.

And That Sweet City With Her Dreaming Spires, She Needs Not June For Beauty's Heightening.

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.

Greatness Is A Spiritual Condition.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Ah, Love, Let Us Be True To One Another! For The World, Which Seems To Lie Before Us Like A Land Of Dreams, So Various, So Beautiful, So New, Hath Really Neither Joy, Nor Love, Nor Light, Nor Certitude, Nor Peace, Nor Help For Pain; And We Are Here As On A Darkling Plain Swept With Confused Alarms Of Struggle And Flight, Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Saw Life Steadily And Saw It Whole.

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

I Am A Liberal, Yet I Am A Liberal Tempered By Experience, Reflexion, And Renouncement, And I Am, Above All, A Believer In Culture.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Journalism Is Literature In A Hurry.

For Science, God Is Simply The Stream Of Tendency By Which All Things Seek To Fulfill The Law Of Their Being.

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.

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!.

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.

The Strongest Part Of A Religion Today Is Its Unconscious Poetry

Calm Soul Of All Things! Make It Mine To Feel, Amid The City's Jar, That There Abides A Peace Of Thine, Man Did Not Make, And Cannot Mar! The Will To Neither Strive Nor Cry, The Power To Feel What Others Give! Calm, Calm Me More! Nor Let Me Die Before I Have Begun To Live.

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.

The Eternal Not Ourselves That Makes For Righteousness.

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.

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.

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

The Love Of Science, And The Energy And Honesty In The Pursuit Of Science, In The Best Of The Aryan Races Do Seem To Correspond In A Remarkable Way To The Love Of Conduct, And The Energy And Honesty In The Pursuit Of Conduct, In The Best Of The Semitic.

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.

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.

Fortime, Not Corydon, Hath Conquered Thee.

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!

When Byron's Eyes Were Shut In Death, We Bow'd Our Head And Held Our Breath. He Taught Us Little; But Our Soul Had Felt His Like A Thunder Roll. . . . We Watch'd The Fount Of Fiery Life Which Serv'd For That Titanic Life.

A Wanderer Is Man From His Birth. He Was Born In A Ship On The Breast Of The River Of Time.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Thought And Science Follow Their Own Law Of Development; They Are Slowly Elaborated In The Growth And Forward Pressure Of Humanity, In What Shakespeare Calls ...the Prophetic Soul, Of The Wide World Dreaming On Things To Come.

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

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?

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.

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

Six Years-six Little Years-six Drops Of Time.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Same Heart Beats In Every Human Breast.

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

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

Sad Patience, Too Near Neighbour To Despair.

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.

Poetry; A Criticism Of Life Under The Conditions Fixed For Such A Criticism By The Laws Of Poetic Truth And Poetic Beauty.

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.

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

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

How Many Minds--almost All The Great Ones--were Formed In Secrecy And Solitude!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Religion Is Ethics Heightened, Enkindled, Lit Up By Feeling

He Will Find One English Book And One Only, Where, As In The "iliad" Itself, Perfect Plainness Of Speech Is Allied With Perfect Nobleness; And That Book Is The Bible.

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.

Miracles Do Not Happen.

All The Live Murmur Of A Summer's Day.

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!

Not Deep The Poet Sees, But Wide.

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

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.

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

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

Genius Is Mainly An Affair Of Energy.

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

History - A Vast Mississippi Of Falsehoods

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.

Thou Waitest For The Spark From Heaven! And We, Light Half-believers In Our Casual Deeds . . . Who Hesitate And Falter Life Away, And Lose Tomorrow The Ground Won Today- Ah, Do Not We, Wanderer, Await It Too?

Because Thou Must Not Dream, Thou Need Not Despair.

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

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.

Let The Long Contention Cease! / Geese Are Swans, And Swans Are Geese.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

Art Still Has Truth. Take Refuge There.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Nature Herself Seems, I Say, To Take The Pen Out Of His Hand, And To Write For Him With Her Own Bare, Sheer, Penetrating Power.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The World Hath Failed To Impart The Joy Our Youth Forebodes; Failed To Fill Up The Void Which In Our Breasts We Bear.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It Is Not In The Outward And Visible World Of Material Life That The Celtic Genius Of Wales Or Ireland Can At This Day Hope To Count For Much; It Is In The Inward World Of Thought And Science.what It Has Been, What Is Has Done, What It Will Be Or Will Do, As A Matter Of Modern Politics.

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.

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.

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

Waiting For The Spark From Heaven To Fall.

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

Culture Being A Pursuit Of Our Total Perfection By Means Of Getting To Know, On All The Matters Which Most Concern Us, The Best Which Has Been Thought And Said In The World.

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

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.

The Working-class Is Now Issuing From Its Hiding-place To Assert An Englishman's Heaven-born Privilege Of Doing As He Likes, And Is Beginning To Perplex Us By Marching Where It Likes, Meeting Where It Likes, Bawling What It Likes, Breaking What It Likes.

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

Men Of Culture Are The True Apostles Of Equality

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!

Culture Is Both An Intellectual Phenomenon And A Moral One

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

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

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

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

Creep Into Thy Narrow Bed, Creep, And Let No More Be Said!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Whoever Sets Himself To See Things As They Are Will Find Himself One Of A Very Small Circle But It Is Only By This Small Circle Resolutely Doing Its Own Work That Adequate Ideas Will Ever Get Current At All.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

Greatness Is A Spiritual Condition Worthy To Excite Love, Interest, And Admiration; And The Outward Proof Of Possessing Greatness Is That We Excite Love, Interest, And Admiration.

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

Force And Right Are The Governors Of This World; Force Till Right Is Ready.

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?

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Alfred Marshall

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