Arnold, Matthew

1822 – He was born on the 24th day of December this year in Laleham, Middlesex England.

1845 - He attended Rugby himself, and then Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of Oriel this year.

1849 – He had published his first book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller, which he soon withdrew.

1851 – He was private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, through whose influence he was appointed as school inspector.

1867 – He was not appointed in spite of the fact that he sought for it to the post of Librarian to the House of Commons Library on this year.

1869 – He wrote Culture and Anarchy, famous for the term he popularized for a section of the Victorian era population: "Philistines", a word, which derives its modern cultural meaning (in English - German-language usage was well established) from him. See philistinism.

1877 - He wrote most of his best-known poetry before the age of forty, after which he turned to literary and cultural criticism and theology. His principal writings are, in poetry “Last Essays on Church and Religion”.

1883 - He received a pension of £250. Never fully free from financial troubles (including his son's gambling debts), he left the same year for a lecture tour of America, where his daughter married an American.

1888 – He died on the 15th day of April this year.

• "...what thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most."
• "I do not believe today everything I believed yesterday; I wonder will I believe tomorrow everything I believe today."
• "It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle."
• "Resolve to be thyself; And you know that he who finds himself, Loses his misery."
• "The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion."