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To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.
Walter Pater
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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
Regard
Fashion
Principles
Modern
Inconstant
Thought
Fashions
Become
Modes
Things
Tendency
Tendencies
More quotes by Walter Pater
Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.
Walter Pater
Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.
Walter Pater
The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed then by what it achieved.
Walter Pater
Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.
Walter Pater
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 creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.
Walter Pater
And the fifteenth century was an impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it consecrated everything with which art had to ad as a religious object.
Walter Pater
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 often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its independent value.
Walter Pater
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
Walter Pater
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
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
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 of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us - for that moment only.
Walter Pater
Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.
Walter Pater
The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts
Walter Pater
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
Walter Pater
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
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
Walter Pater
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 in their purest energy?
Walter Pater
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
At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.
Walter Pater
What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.
Walter Pater
