Quote

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life . . . Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end . . . For art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

Walter Pater

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Pater
Age: 54 †
Born: 1839
Born: August 4
Died: 1894
Died: July 30
Art Critic
Art Historian
Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Professor
Writer
Walter Horatio Pater
Hard
Success
Flames
Giving
Comes
Maintain
Always
Experience
Fruit
Life
Moments
Pass
Professing
Art
Sake
Frankly
Ends
Highest
Flame
Give
Simply
Ecstasy
Nothing
Quality
Burn

More quotes by Walter Pater

Image
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
Walter Pater
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 or surprise us is indispensable.
Walter Pater
Image
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 was for him almost literal fact.
Walter Pater
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 world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.
Walter Pater
Image
What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.
Walter Pater
Image
To the modern spirit nothing is, or can be rightly known, except relatively and under conditions.
Walter Pater
Image
The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed then by what it achieved.
Walter Pater
Image
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
Walter Pater
Image
Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highestquality toyourmomentsasthey pass,and simply for those moments'sake.
Walter Pater
Image
We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life.
Walter Pater
Image
Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.
Walter Pater
Image
To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.
Walter Pater
Image
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 thing has vanished, because it was pure effect but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
Walter Pater
Image
No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece.
Walter Pater
Image
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.
Walter Pater
Image
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
Walter Pater
Image
It is always hazardous to express what one has to say indirectly and allusively.
Walter Pater
Image
What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.
Walter Pater
Image
Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.
Walter Pater
Image
Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.
Walter Pater