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Matthew Arnold
(24 Dec 1822 - 15 Apr 1888)
English poet and social critic.
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Science Quotes by Matthew Arnold (13 quotes)
But the idea of science and systematic knowledge is wanting to our whole instruction alike, and not only to that of our business class ... In nothing do England and the Continent at the present moment more strikingly differ than in the prominence which is now given to the idea of science there, and the neglect in which this idea still lies here; a neglect so great that we hardly even know the use of the word science in its strict sense, and only employ it in a secondary and incorrect sense.
— Matthew Arnold
Schools and Universities on the Continent (1868),278-9.
For science, God is simplythe stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfil the law of their being.
— Matthew Arnold
In Literature and Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (1873), 41.
Here is the element or power of conduct, of intellect and knowledge, of beauty, and of social life and manners, and all needful to build up a complete human life. … We have instincts responding to them all, and requiring them all, and we are perfectly civilized only when all these instincts of our nature—all these elements in our civilization have been adequately recognized and satisfied.
— Matthew Arnold
Collected in Tryon Edwards (ed.), A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors Both Ancient and Modern (1891), 75.
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play,
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
Sees all her sons at play,
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
— Matthew Arnold
From dramatic poem, 'Empedocles on Etna', first published anonymously, collected in Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852). As quoted in The Contemporary Review (1867), Vol. 6, 344. Also in The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840-1867 (1909), 94.
Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head, and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head, and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.
— Matthew Arnold
'A Wish' (1867). In Kenneth Allot (ed.), Matthew Arnold: A Selection (1954), 194.
The “hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits,” this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
— Matthew Arnold
'Literature and Science', delivered as a lecture during Arnold's tour of the United States in 1883 and published in Discourses in America (1885). Taken from M. H. Abrams (ed.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1993), Vol. 2, 1441.
The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they are …
— Matthew Arnold
On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), in R.H. Super (ed.) The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold: Lectures and Essays in Criticism (1962), Vol. 3, 298.
The highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be eminent in science; and we have Newton. Shakspeare [sic] and Newton: in the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription and routine, the fullest room to expand as it will.
— Matthew Arnold
'The Literary Influence of Acadennes' Essays in Criticism (1865), in R.H. Super (ed.) The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold: Lectures and Essays in Criticism (1962), Vol. 3, 238.
The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.
— Matthew Arnold
'Maurice de Guerin' Essays in Criticism (1865), in R.H. Super (ed.) The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold: Lectures and Essays in Criticism (1962), Vol. 3, 13.
The love of science, and the energy and honesty in the pursuit of science, in the best of the Aryan races do seem to correspond in a remarkable way to the love of conduct, and the energy and honesty in the pursuit of conduct, in the best of the Semitic.
— Matthew Arnold
Literature and Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (1873), 386.
The study of letters is the study of the operation of human force, of human freedom and activity; the study of nature is the study of the operation of non-human forces, of human limitation and passivity. The contemplation of human force and activity tends naturally to heighten our own force and activity; the contemplation of human limits and passivity tends rather to check it. Therefore the men who have had the humanistic training have played, and yet play, so prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their prodigious ignorance of the universe.
— Matthew Arnold
Schools and Universities on the Continent (1868), in R. H. Super (ed.) The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold: Schools and Universities on the Continent (1964), Vol. 4, 292.
Thought and science follow their own law of development; they are slowly elaborated in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in what Shakespeare calls
...The prophetic soul,
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
...The prophetic soul,
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
— Matthew Arnold
St. Paul and Protestantism (1875), 155.
Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
— Matthew Arnold
Thomas Humphry Ward (ed.) with Introduction by Matthew Arnold, The English Poets: Chaucer to Donne (3rd. Ed., 1880), Vol. 1, xviii.
Quotes by others about Matthew Arnold (1)
Few men live lives of more devoted self-sacrifice than the family physician, but he may become so completely absorbed in work that leisure is unknown…. More than most men he feels the tragedy of isolation—that inner isolation so well expressed in Matthew Arnold’s line “We mortal millions live alone.”
Address to the Canadian Medical Association, Montreal (17 Sep 1902), 'Chauvinism in Medicine', published in The Montreal Medical Journal (1902), 31, 267. Collected in Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practitioners of Medicine (1904), 299.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
