The quotations of

Matthew Arnold

British poet and cultural critic

1822–1888

24 quotes, most often on Poetry, Politics and Writing.

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
Sohrab and Rustum (1853), Line 656
- Truth & Lies
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
- Journalism
- Writing
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.
Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
- Character
Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
- Art
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
Thyrsis (1866), St. 2
- Beauty
The crown of literature is poetry.
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888), Count Leo Tolstoi
- Poetry
Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!
Empedocles on Etna (1852)
- Hope
Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. III, Barbarians, Philistines, Populace
- Politics
- Wisdom
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.
The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
- Knowledge
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
Culture and Anarchy (1869), Preface
- America
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.
Civilization in the United States (1888), p. 177
- America
- Journalism
I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (c. 6 December 1847); note the alternate spelling of Shakespeare
- Writing
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), “Shakespeare”, l. 1
- Genius
- Poetry
Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.
The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
- Politics
- Thinking
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.
Introduction to Ward’s English Poets (1880)
- Poetry
- Religion

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