Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
That the mere matter of a poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape--should be nothing without the form, the spirit… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
“The younger, certainly, had to the full that charm of a constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time extravagant or… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
“art is self-sufficient and need serve no moral or political purpose” — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped… — Walter Pater Copy Share Image
