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Walter Pater

Walter Pater Quotes

Critic

Walter Pater was a British essayist, critic, and poet, known for his influential literary criticism and contributions to the Aesthetic Movement. Born on August 4, 1839, and died on July 30, 1894, Pater's work had a significant impact on the development of modern literary theory and the appreciation of art and literature.

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All Art Moments Form May World Beauty Passion Ecstasy Ends Objects

Famous Walter Pater Quotes

“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.”

Art Age Religious Century Objects Serious Pursuit Ads Ardent Impassioned

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Way Real Voice Groups Wall Personality Rounds Impression Thick Conjecture

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Giving May Form Passion Sorrow Activity Various Ecstasy Enthusiastic Disinterested Great Passion Disinterest Disinterested Love

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

“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.”

Has Beens Art Made Term Beauty Universal Abstract Formulas

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Made Certain Christianity Century Accounts Ancient Italian Scholar Greece Renaissance Reconcile Ancient Greece

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

“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.”

Should Kind Important Beautiful Certain Beauty Objects Moved Critics Definitions Intellect Abstract Temperament Beautiful Objects Definition Of Beauty

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. 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 touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.”

Way Moments Force Sleep Effort Attitude Sun Theory Passionate Awful Evening Desperate Tragic Gathering Frost Dividing Brevity Splendour

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Giving Art Ends Hard Moments Quality Highest Fruit Sake Flames Ecstasy Success In Life Your Mom

Author: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.”

Art Book Beautiful Desire Passion Sake Awakening Poetic Passages Confession

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Wells Littles Has Beens Art Done Helping Use Enjoy Beauty Excellence Excellent Discussion Precise Well Done

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”

Humans Term Quality Special Students Universal Aim Definitions Useless Manifestation Abstract Proportion Formulas Relative Concrete Human Experience Aesthetics

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

“To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.”

People Knows Firsts Self Interesting Conditions

Book:Marius the Epicurean

Source: Marius the Epicurean

“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.”

Art Age School Form Stupidity Substance Contention Vulgarity Literary Art

Book:The Works of Walter Pater

Source: The Works of Walter Pater

“The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed then by what it achieved.”

Century Renaissance

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“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.”

Facts Natural Objects Poetry Is Literal Assertion Artifice Rhetorical Wordsworth

Book:The Works of Walter Pater: Essays from 'The Guardian.'

Source: The Works of Walter Pater: Essays from 'The Guardian.'

“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.”

Different Age Together Moving Form Culture Activity Intellectual Starting Various Starting Point

Book:Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Source: Studies in the History of the Renaissance

“To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.”

Principles Modern Fashion All Things Regard Tendencies

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

“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.”

Humans Philosophy Spirit Culture Constant Observation Human Spirit

Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Source: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.”

May Ideas Philosophy Helping Might Views Theory Criticism Philosophical Instruments Point Of View

Book:The Renaissance

Source: The Renaissance

About the Author

Born: August 4, 1839
Died: July 30, 1894
Known for: Critic
Quotes: 69

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Books & Sources

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and PoetryRelated source material

The RenaissanceRelated source material

The Works of Walter PaterRelated source material

Appreciations, With an Essay on StyleRelated source material

Studies in the History of the RenaissanceRelated source material

Marius the EpicureanRelated source material

Essays from The GuardianRelated source material

LettersRelated source material

Marius the Epicurean: Easyread Comfort EditionRelated source material

Marius the Epicurean: Easyread Large EditionRelated source material

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