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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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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
Nothing
Rightly
Relatively
Except
Conditions
Modern
Known
Knowledge
Spirit
More quotes by Walter Pater
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
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
Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.
Walter Pater
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
To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.
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
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
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
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
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
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
Walter Pater
Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.
Walter Pater
Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced.
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
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
The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts
Walter Pater
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
What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.
Walter Pater
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
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
