Walter Pater Quotes

Powerful Walter Pater for Daily Growth

About Walter Pater

Walter Horatio Pater (February 7, 1835 – July 27, 1894) was a British literary critic, poet, and novelist, best known for his influential work "Studies in the History of the Renaissance." Born in London to middle-class parents, Pater's early education was at King Edward VI Grammar School in Northampton before he moved on to Queen's College, Oxford. Here, he immersed himself in Greek and Roman literature, developing a lifelong love for the classics that would greatly influence his later works. In 1860, Pater was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was during this period that he wrote some of his most famous work, including "Marius the Epicurean" (1885) and the collection of essays "Studies in the History of the Renaissance" (1873). The latter, particularly the essay "Conclusion," with its famous phrase "to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy," became emblematic of the Aesthetic Movement that emerged during the mid-Victorian era. Pater's work was marked by a sensuous appreciation for beauty and a deep interest in the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Renaissance. His prose style was characterized by its lush imagery and intricate phrasing, earning him a reputation as one of the most stylish writers of his time. However, his emphasis on personal experience and emotional intensity was not without controversy, with some critics accusing him of promoting immorality through his focus on beauty and sensuality. Despite these criticisms, Pater's work continues to be studied and admired today for its insightful analysis, elegant prose, and enduring influence on modern literary thought. His legacy lies not only in the ideas he presented but also in the way he approached literature and the world, encouraging readers to embrace the beauty and wonder that surround us.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."

Walter Pater's quote, "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music," suggests that art aims to achieve the qualities inherent in music. In essence, he is implying that just as music transcends words and reasoning through its emotional impact, so too does art strive to elicit an emotional response from its audience without relying on logic or explanation. This means that great art, like music, moves the soul and communicates complex ideas in a way that speaks directly to our emotions, creating a profound connection between artist and audience.

"The only way to get a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

This quote emphasizes that the process of generating many diverse ideas leads to the discovery of valuable and meaningful ones. It suggests that creativity, innovation, and insight often arise through a productive exploration and combination of multiple thoughts or perspectives. In other words, the more you think, create, and explore, the higher the likelihood of discovering something significant or groundbreaking.

"To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."

This quote by Walter Pater emphasizes the importance of passion, intensity, and sustained enthusiasm in living a meaningful life. The "hard, gem-like flame" represents an unwavering, precious spirit that burns brightly and consistently. Maintaining this ecstasy or exaltation is the key to success in life, suggesting that living with passion and fervor provides purpose and fulfillment. In other words, one should strive to live a life filled with intense passion and enthusiasm, which will lead to a sense of accomplishment and a rich, rewarding existence.

"Leisure and contemplation are the soul's means of growth."

The quote suggests that leisure (time to rest, reflect, and ponder) and contemplation (deep thought or meditation) are essential for personal development and growth. In other words, taking time to pause, think, and reflect allows our inner selves (our soul) to expand, learn, and grow. This wisdom encourages us not to rush through life but to find time to appreciate its beauty and understand ourselves better.

"The value of a work of art lies not in its imitation of nature, but in its realization of an idea."

This quote by Walter Pater emphasizes that the true worth of a piece of art doesn't lie in its literal representation or mimicry of nature, but rather in its ability to embody an idea or concept. Essentially, Pater suggests that successful art transcends simple imitation and instead offers profound insight, emotional resonance, or intellectual challenge through the realization of a thoughtful intention.

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

- Walter Pater

Thought, More, Tendency, Modes

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

Experience, Flood, Objects, Pressing

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

Love, Otherwise, Which, Disinterested

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

Desperate, About, Awful, Hardly

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.

- Walter Pater

Some, Made, Christianity, Reconcile

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

Beauty, Been, Very, Precise

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.

- Walter Pater

Fact, Which, Rhetorical, Literal

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

Art, Religious, Which, Impassioned

Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.

- Walter Pater

Some, Very, Dividing, Discriminate

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

Very, Lightly, Developed, Outward

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

Activity, Move, Which, Forms

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

Habits, Two, Our, Meantime

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.

- Walter Pater

Voice, Through, Each One, Group

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

- Walter Pater

Burn, Always, Maintain, Flame

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

Beauty, Intellect, Correct, Presence

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

- Walter Pater

Rather, Things, Century, Designed

A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to to be seen in them by the finest senses?

- Walter Pater

Senses, May, Given, Counted

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

Love, Beauty, Book, Confessions

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

Observation, Constant, Eager, Rouse

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

May, Pass, Otherwise, Philosophical

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

Art, Some, Been, Abstract

With myself, how to pass time becomes sometimes the question - unavoidably, though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad in a life so short as ours.

- Walter Pater

Question, Pass, Though, Strikes

For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

- Walter Pater

Art, Give, Proposing, Sake

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

- Walter Pater

Give, Proposing, Frankly, Highest

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

- Walter Pater

Music, Art, Condition, Towards

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

- Walter Pater

End, Fruit, Itself, Experience

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