Matthew Arnold Quotes

“Ah, fish, there is no fare
Quite like a flounder! They surely will not miss
A piece or two from stacks of sole like this;
I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share.
Look! the lamplight on the lane is pretty
They're back from walking out on Dover Beach.
I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech,
For we are in a world untouched by pity
Where ignorant humans curse the kitty."

(From Dover Sole)”
― Henry N. Beard, Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse

“Nature is cruel; it's man whose is sick of blood– and man doesn't seem so very sick of it...”
― Robert Frost

“The great works of culture have it in their power to clear mental confusion, they give us words for things we had felt but had not previously grasped; they replace cliché with insight.”
― The School of Life, Great Thinkers: Simple Tools from 60 Great Thinkers to Improve Your Life Today

“When critics like Matthew Arnold, for example, suggest that his poetry is deficient in elaborate thought, they only prove, as Matthew Arnold proved, that they themselves could never be great poets. It is no valid accusation against a poet that the sentiment he expresses is commonplace. Poetry is always commonplace; it is vulgar in the noblest sense of that noble word. Unless a man can make the same kind of ringing appeal to absolute and admitted sentiments that is made by a popular orator, he has lost touch with emotional literature. Unless he is to some extent a demagogue, he cannot be a poet. A man who expresses in poetry new and strange and undiscovered emotions is not a poet; he is a brain specialist. Tennyson can never be discredited before any serious tribunal of criticism because the sentiments and thoughts to which he dedicates himself are those sentiments and thoughts which occur to anyone. These are the peculiar province of poetry; poetry, like religion, is always a democratic thing, even if it pretends the contrary.”
― G.K. Chesterton