The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Matthew Arnold23 quotes
It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think. — Matthew Arnold · 1861So, loath to suffer mute,
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear. — Matthew Arnold · 1852The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
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.
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. — Matthew Arnold · 1867Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean. — Matthew Arnold · 1867Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance rul'd!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea. — Matthew Arnold · 1852Thou hast no right to bliss. — Matthew Arnold · 1852All 23 quotes →