Quote

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

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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
Moment
Effect
Trivial
Flail
Moments
Door
Accident
Windmill
Happens
Effects
Sudden
Vane
Light
Doors
Longing
Windmills
May
Behinds
Accidents
Barn
Thing
Pure
Weather
Barns
Behind
Leaves
Vanished
Happen
Dust
Relish
Transfigures

More quotes by Walter Pater

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Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.
Walter Pater
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One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.
Walter Pater
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Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.
Walter Pater
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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
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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
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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
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In truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.
Walter Pater
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But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects... like some trick of magic each object is loosed into a group of impressions - colour, odour, texture... And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world... the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the individual mind.
Walter Pater
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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
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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
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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
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Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.
Walter Pater
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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 unconnected roads.
Walter Pater
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What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.
Walter Pater
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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
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To the modern spirit nothing is, or can be rightly known, except relatively and under conditions.
Walter Pater
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To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.
Walter Pater
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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
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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
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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