Quotessence
Home / Authors / Walter Pater
Walter Pater

Walter Pater Quotes

Critic

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtMomentsFormMayWorldBeautyPassionEcstasyEndsObjectsPhilosophySpiritWayAgeCertainConditionsCreationCultureGivingModern

Famous Walter Pater Quotes

“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.”

MayMomentsLightHappensBehindsDoorsEffectsPureLongingAccidentsWeatherDustRelishBarnsWindmillsTrivial Things
Book:The Renaissance: Studies of Art and Poetry
Create image

“To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. ... While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend.”

WellsMayHardMomentsHandsSeemsFacesSpiritArtistPassionFeetStrangeSensesCuriousFlamesContributionColourHorizonEcstasySuccess In LifeExquisiteStirring
Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Create image

“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.”

WayMomentsForceSleepEffortAttitudeSunTheoryPassionateAwfulEveningDesperateTragicGatheringFrostDividingBrevitySplendour
Book:The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Create image