Skip to content

Quotes from Empedocles on Etna — Matthew Arnold

1822–1888 England

← All quotes by Matthew Arnold

11 quotes

Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

The sophist sneers: Fool, take
Thy pleasure, right or wrong!
The pious wail: Forsake
A world these sophists throng!
Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

’Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, the Nine.
—The leader is fairest,
But all are divine.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Not here, O Apollo
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

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.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Thou hast no right to bliss.

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Matthew Arnold (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.