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 More Quotes by Walter Pater More Quotes From Walter Pater Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. Walter Pater vulgaritybookworld All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. Walter Pater aspiremusicart To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Walter Pater congratulationsflameslife The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited. Walter Pater creativityimaginationexercise 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 importantbeautifulbeauty 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. Walter Pater flamesgivingart Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass. Walter Pater qualitygivingart She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants, and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. Walter Pater rocksmotherhands To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people. Walter Pater selfpeopleinteresting All art constantly aspires to the condition of music....In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other. Walter Pater expressionmeanart 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 lightdoorsweather 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 excellencebeautyart 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. Walter Pater effortsleepattitude Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. Walter Pater fruitexperienceunderstanding 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 abstractbeautyart A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry. Walter Pater elementsconsciousnessimportant 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 creativityeyeexercise To higher or lower ends, they [the majority of mankind] move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources. Walter Pater ambitionpeoplemoving It is always hazardous to express what one has to say indirectly and allusively. 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 focusenergynumbers
