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The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
Topic: Advice / Experience / Wisdom
Source: None
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What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes; but not this alone.
Topic: Age
Source: Growing Old
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I must not say that she was true,
Yet let me say that she was fair;
And they, that lovely face who view,
They should not ask if truth be there.
Topic: Beauty
Source: Euphrosyne
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Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
Like the wave;
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love tends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles; and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.
Topic: Change
Source: A Question (st. 1)
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Christianity is a source; no one supply of water and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much error, to exhibit any series of maxims, even those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity may be run up.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Every time the words "contrition" or "humility" drop from the lips of a prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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The seven works of bodily mercy be these: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and the needy, harbour the houseless, comfort the sick, visit prisoners, bury the dead. The seven works of spiritual mercy be these: teach men the truth, counsel men to hold with Christ's law, chastise sinners by moderate reproving in charity, comfort sorrowful men by Christ's passion, forgive wrongs, suffer meekly reproofs for the right of God's law, pray heartily for friend and for foe. ... Middle English Sermons September 6, 2001 Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851 Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965 Of the access for us, at any rate, to the spirit of life -- us who were born in Christendom, and are in touch, conscious or unconscious, with Christianity -- this is the true account. Questions over which the churches spend so much labour and time -- questions about the Trinity, about the godhead of Christ, about the procession of the Holy Ghost -- are not vital; what is vital is the doctrine of access to the spirit of life through Christ.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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The East bow'd low before the blast,
In patient, deep disdain.
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.
Topic: Countries
Source: Obermann Once More (st. 28)
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Her cabin'd ample spirit,
It fluttered and fail'd for breath;
Tonight it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.
Topic: Death
Source: Requiescat
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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome.
Topic: Death
Source: Requiescat
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What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls
a butterfly.
Topic: Death
Source: Requiescat
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What then remains, but that we still should cry
Not to be born, or being born to die.
Topic: Death
Source: Requiescat
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One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common--discontent.
Topic: Discontent
Source: None
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Culture is "To know the best that has been said and thought in
the world."
Topic: Education
Source: Literature and Dogma (preface)
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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
Topic: Emotion`
Source: None
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If Paris that brief flight allow,
My humble tomb explore!
It bears: "Eternity, be thou
My refuge!" and no more.
Topic: Epitaphs
Source: Epitaph
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Then gazing up 'mid the dim pillars high,
The foliaged marble forest where ye lie,
Hush, ye will say, it is eternity!
This is the glimmering verge of heaven, and there
The columns of the heavenly palaces.
Topic: Eternity
Source: The Tomb
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[Oxford] Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs and unpopular
names and impossible loyalties.
Topic: Failure
Source: Essays in Criticism (closing paragraph of preface)
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God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools
Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more.
Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools
Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore.
This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules:
'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
Topic: God
Source: The Divinity (st. 3)
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No, no! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing--only he
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
Topic: Immortality
Source: Sonnet--Immortality
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Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery. -Matthew Arnold.
Topic: Inspiring
Source: None
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Journalism is literature in a hurry.
Topic: Journalism
Source: None
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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 as we discern.
Topic: Life
Source: Morality (st. 2)
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This strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims.
Topic: Life
Source: Scholar-Gypsy (st. 21)
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Saw life steadily and saw it whole.
Topic: Life
Source: Sonnet to a Friend, said of Sophocles
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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome.
Topic: Life
Source: Sonnet to a Friend, said of Sophocles
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They live that they may eat, but he himself [Socrates] eats that
he may live.
Topic: Life
Source: Sonnet to a Friend, said of Sophocles
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We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are
here for, I do not know.
Topic: Life
Source: Sonnet to a Friend, said of Sophocles
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The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Topic: Light
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Love
Source: Dover Beach
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Like driftwood spares which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
Topic: Meeting
Source: Terrace at Berne
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But each day brings its petty dust our soon-choked souls to fill, and we forget because we must, and not because we will.
Topic: Memory
Source: None
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All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.
Topic: Miracles
Source: None
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Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds?--
To its own impulse every creature stirs;
Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!
Topic: Nature
Source: Religious Isolation (st. 4)
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Hark! ah, the nightingale--
The tawny-throated!
Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!--what pain!
. . . .
Again--thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!
Topic: Nightingales
Source: Philomela (l. 32)
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Odin, thou whirlwind, what a threat is this
Thou threatenest what transcends thy might, even thine,
For of all powers the mightiest far art thou,
Lord over men on earth, and Gods in Heaven;
Yet even from thee thyself hath been withheld
One thing--to undo what thou thyself hast ruled.
Topic: Power
Source: Balder Dead--The Funeral
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I met a preacher there I knew, and said,
Ill and overworked, how fare you in this scene?
Bravely! said he; for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.
Topic: Preaching
Source: East London
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Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind,
Hath look'd on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.
Topic: Religion
Source: Progress (st. 10)
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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
Topic: Religion
Source: None
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The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
Topic: Religion / Beliefs
Source: None
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On Sundays, at the matin-chime,
The Alpine peasants, two and three,
Climb up here to pray;
Burghers and dames, at summer's prime,
Ride out to church from Chamberry,
Dight with mantles gay,
But else it is a lonely time
Round the Church of Brou.
Topic: Sabbath
Source: The Church of Brou (II, st. 3)
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Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.
Topic: Self-knowledge
Source: None
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Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask--Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: Shakespeare
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This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.
Topic: Society
Source: None
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And see all sights from pole to pole
And glance, and nod, and bustle by,
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
Topic: Soul
Source: A Southern Night (st. 18)
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But each day brings from its pretty dust
Our soon choked souls to fill.
Topic: Soul
Source: Switzerland (pt. VI)
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The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly
the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a
harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of
beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two
noblest of things"--as Swift . . . most happily calls them in his
Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and
light."
Topic: Sweetness
Source: Culture and Anarchy
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The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and
light.
Topic: Sweetness
Source: Culture and Anarchy
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Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is
more) the passion for making them prevail.
Topic: Sweetness
Source: Literature and Dogma--Preface
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The kings of modern thought are dumb.
Topic: Thought
Source: Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse
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