Florence Earle Coates

“ Time after time we find repeated the warnings not only against such bodily pleasures as blunt the soul, but against the casual interests that split and distract it. It is from the Note-Books we learn that that noble self-mastery, that equable temper, that invariable sweetness and exaltation of mind, which seems so a part of him, were not maintained without effort,—learn how constantly he chose to live in the spirit, desiring for himself before all things vivid insight and gentle emotions.
⁠George Eliot declared that of all modern poetry Arnold's was that which kept constantly growing upon her ”

“ Beyond the elegiac cry is the greater cry of humanity!"
⁠These illuminating judgments and tributes of impressive beauty are not unworthy of one who, as Dr. Brooke declares, "has his own district chair in the general assembly and church of the first-born of England."
⁠That Arnold's poetry has a note of pathos—that it is often poignantly sad—none will deny; otherwise, it could hardly be so exquisite,—for, as Shelley reminds us, Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought, [1] and "the poet expressing pain as well as pleasure, becomes at one with all who feel pain. ”

“ The high emotion and thought of a heart worn more by sorrow for the world than by its own pain, fills these verses to the brim. He worked with deep anxiety to help the world forward to clearer views of life. ”

“ We find the Latin precept, Always set before yourself some definite aim, recurring oftener than any other; and the two main conditions of all good work, isolation and limitation, are continually insisted upon. "To disregard the transient and trivial, and to serve the eternal alone—it is strange to see with what persistency the poet braces himself up to that exacting standard. ”

“ In those precious little volumes written in many tongues and designed for no eye but his own, we see what standards of perfection he kept before him—by what means he strengthened and enriched his spirit, insisting upon the importance of definite and constant labor—of work "that fills and moralizes the day." ”