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Ah! two desires toss about
The poet's feverish blood;
One drives him to the world without,
And one to solitude.

— Matthew Arnold

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Alone

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

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

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.

Thyrsis (1866)

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.

Culture and Anarchy (1869)

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

Empedocles on Etna (1852)

Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm,
Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

Merope (1858)

All Matthew Arnold quotes →

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From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

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When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

Walter Scott Marmion (1808)

There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.

Sylvester Stallone

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Matthew Arnold (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.