In our anguish we struggle To elude Him, to lie to Him, yet His love observes His appalling promise; His predilection As we wander and weep is with us to the end, Minding our meanings, our least matter dear to Him.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
^6  The Age of  Anxiety, pt.6, Epilogue.

Vain matter is worse than vain words.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  The Advancement of Learning, bk.1.

Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.

-Balfour, ArthurJames Balfour, 1st Earl
Attributed.

But Fonstein belonged to an even more advanced category†their aim is to convert weaknesses and secrets into burnable energy. A first-class man subsists on the matter he destroys, just as the stars do.

-Bellow, Saul
  Something To Remember Me By,'The Bellarosa Connection'.

I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest, My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning. The world shall find this miracle in me, That fire can burn when all the matter's spent.

-Daniel, Samuel
  Delia, sonnet 33.

It has been often said, even by proponents of those picturesknown inaestheticslang as Cubist and Abstract, that they have no subject matter. Such a statement is equivalent to saying that life has no subject matter.

-Davis, Stuart
  'The Cube Root', in  Art News, vol.41,1 Feb.

I am no prophetöand here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

This particularly rapid unintelligible patter Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
  Ruddigore, act 2.

It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into, that countedöand the manwho was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

-Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
  The Voice of the People, bk.2, ch.4.

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?

-James, Henry
  Lambert Strether. The Ambassadors, bk.5, ch.11.

Theyare not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

There are living systems; there is no'living matter'.

-Monod,Jacques
  Lecture, College of France.

The Socialist papers†came out full tothethroat of well- printed matter†admirable and straightforward expositions of the doctrines and practice of Socialism, free from hasteand spiteand hard words†with a kind of May-day freshness amidst the worryand terror of the moment.

-Morris,William
  News from Nowhere.

Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reddit natura figuras. nec perit in toto quidquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique, desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa, haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant. No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there's nothing in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth isno morethan incipient change froma prior state, while dying is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant.

-Ovid full name Publius OvidiusNaso   4317
Metamorphoses, bk.15, l.252^8 (translated by Peter Green).

Science provides a vision of reality seen from the perspective of reason, a perspective that sees the vast order of the universe, living and non-living matter, as a material system governed by rules that can be known by the human mind.It is a powerful vision, formal and austere but strangely silent about many of the questions that deeplyconcernus. Scienceshowsuswhat existsbut not what to do about it.

-Pagels, Heinz R(udolf)
  The Dreams of Reason. US writer, Professor of Humanities  at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.  Her  works  include  Sexual  Personae  (1990)  and Vamps andTramps (1994).

Concerning the gods I am not in a position to know either that they are or that they are not, or what theyare like in appearance; for there are many things that are preventing knowledge, the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life.

-Protagoras
Quoted in G B Kerferd The Sophistic Movement (1981), ch.13.

   Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love; I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.

-Rogers,Will
  Poem addressed to a dead student. TheWaking,'Elegy for Jane'.

It ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.

-Ruskin,John
  Unto this Last, preface.

Does it matter?ölosing your sight?† There's such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light.

-Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain
  'Does It Matter'.