Matthew Arnold Perfection Quotations

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

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

Not a having and a resting, but a growing and becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.

Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.

Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.

Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.