Best Walter Pater Quotes
- That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what… Almost Literal
- The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the culture of an age, move for the most part from different starting-points, and by… Activity
- To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. All
- The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Constant
- Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. Criticism
- A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment - and the… Accident
- A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and… Accident
- Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood… Attractive
- But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects... like some trick of magic each object is loosed into a group of impressions - colour,… Begins
- To the modern spirit nothing is, or can be rightly known, except relatively and under conditions. Conditions
- A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite or… All
- Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult. Always Write
- How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite… Energy
- To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Burn
- It is always hazardous to express what one has to say indirectly and allusively. Express
- She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the… All
- Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their… Attitude
- With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and… All
- For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments'… Art
- The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed that by what it achieved. Achieved