Matthew Arnold citáty
Matthew Arnold
Datum narození: 24. prosinec 1822
Datum úmrtí: 15. duben 1888
Matthew Arnold byl anglický básník, esejista a kulturní kritik. Působil jako profesor poesie na Oxfordské univerzitě a školní inspektor. Byl synem významného pedagoga Thomase Arnolda, ředitele internátní školy Rugby.
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řecká lyričkaCitáty Matthew Arnold
„We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides; —
But tasks, in hours of insight willed,
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.
"Morality" (1852), st. 1
„And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: 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.
St. 4
„The what you have to say depends on your age.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Had Shakespeare and Milton lived in the atmosphere of modern feeling, had they had the multitude of new thoughts and feelings to deal with a modern has, I think it likely the style of each would have been far less curious and exquisite. For in a man style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age. In the 17th century it was a smaller harvest than now, and sooner to be reaped; and therefore to its reaper was left time to stow it more finely and curiously. Still more was this the case in the ancient world. The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century.
Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (December 1847/early 1848)
„Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?
Act I, sc. ii
„Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.
"To a Friend" (1849), line 9-12
„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.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: 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.
"Preface to Poems" (1853)
„The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
„Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: 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.
Act I, sc. ii
„Thou waitest for the spark from heaven!“
— Matthew Arnold
Context: 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?
St. 18
