Matthew Arnold Poetry Quotations

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.

In his poetry as well as in his life Shelley was indeed 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel', beating in the void his luminous wings in vain

The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative.

The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.