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The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction.... Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

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Sep 06, 2025

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About Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 - 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator.

Popular Matthew Arnold Quotes

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.

With women the heart argues, not the mind.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

This strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry.

Wandering between two worlds,—one dead, The other powerless to be born.

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?

Resolve to be thyself: and know that he Who finds himself loses his misery.

He bears the seed of ruin in himself.

Resolve to find thyself; and to know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, 'To make reason and the will of God prevail.'

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and hustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die.

Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be imminent in poetry — and we have Shakespeare.

Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.

Philistinism!—We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.

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.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

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.

All this I bear, for, what I seek, I know: Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

With close-lipp'd Patience for our only friend, Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair.

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.

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.

His expression may often be called bald ... but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.

Time may restore us in his course Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force: But where will Europe’s latter hour Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?

He spoke, and loos’d our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth.

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.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Too fast we live, too much are tried, Too harass’d, to attain Wordsworth’s sweet calm, or Goethe’s wide And luminous view to gain.

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.

‘He knows’, says Hebraism, ‘his Bible!’—whenever we hear this said, we may, without any elaborate defense of culture, content ourselves with answering simply: ‘No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible.’

Culture is 'to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.'

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

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!

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.

One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common — discontent.

I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

Conduct is three-fourths of life and its largest concern.

Was Christ a man like us?—Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he!

But so many books thou readest, But so many schemes thou breedest, But so many wishes feedest, That thy poor head almost turns.

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.

We do not what we ought; What we ought not, we do; And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through; But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.

The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

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.

This strange disease of modern life.

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill.

Still standing for some false impossible shore.

Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

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