Sanity -- that is the great ...

Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
 Matthew Arnold

More phrases

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Quotes from the same author

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.
 Matthew Arnold
Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
 Matthew Arnold
Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life.
 Matthew Arnold
Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.
 Matthew Arnold
There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, "To make reason and the will of God prevail.
 Matthew Arnold