A Quote by Matthew Arnold

Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

Matthew Arnold

Quote Topics

Beauty Poetry Truth Conditions Criticism Fixed Laws Life Poetic

Quote Author

Matthew Arnold
English - Novelist
December 24, 1822 - April 15, 1888

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

Mike Gordon

The ambiguity of poetic language answers to the ambiguity of human life as a whole, and therein lies its unique value. All interpretations of poetic language only interpret what the poetry has already interpreted.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

Elizabeth Bowen

Poetry is about as much a 'criticism of life' as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.

Ezra Pound

Opera combines pretty basic theater and poetry, but the storyline itself is actually quite poetic and, after some digital research, taking that actual content and seeing it as undeniably poetic.

John Darnielle

Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.

Frank Moore Cross

I think that things are poetic when they don't have a boundary. Without rules. My life is poetic.

Mark Gonzales

All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.

Gaston Bachelard

Poetic language is singularly appropriate for recounting the life of the king who is traditionally accepted as the author of the poetic psalms, some of which are included in the narrative.

Robert Pinsky

I don't have a very high opinion, actually, of the world of criticism - or the practice of criticism. I think I admire art criticism, criticism of painting and sculpture, far more than I do that of say films and books, literary or film criticism. But I don't much like the practice. I think there are an awful lot of bad people in it.

Tom Robbins

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

Franz Grillparzer

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.

Jane Campion

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

Elizabeth Gilbert

My literary criticism has become less specifically academic. I was really writing literary history in The New Poetic, but my general practice of writing literary criticism is pretty much what it always has been. And there has always been a strong connection between being a writer - I feel as though I know what it feels like inside and I can say I've experienced similar problems and solutions from the inside. And I think that's a great advantage as a critic, because you know what the writer is feeling.