Philip Gilbert Hamerton

There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

A perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

“Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are still. If you will have a model…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Thackeray and Balzac will make it possible for our descendants to live over again the England and France of to-day. Seen in…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Never be afraid of What is good; the good is always the road to what is true.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their class, and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

All that we have read and learned, all that has occupied and interested us in the thoughts and deeds of men abler…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

You may have a cat in the room with you without anxiety about anything except eatables. The presence of a cat is…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

“The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped these days, when we have the results of them…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots and the fitness of the little…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The only hope of preserving what is best, lies in the practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

As there is no pleasure in military life for a soldier who fears death, so there is no independence in civil existence…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

People have prejudices against a nation in which they have no acquaintances.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do.

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read…

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton