Walter Pater

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

#artifice #assertion #fact #him #life

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

— Walter Pater

#century #designed #fifteenth #fifteenth century #great

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

#culture #eager #human #human spirit #life

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

#age #culture #different #forms #intellectual

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

— Walter Pater

#burn #ecstasy #flame #hard #life

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

#become #fashions #modern #modes #more

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

#gather #help #ideas #instruments #may

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. ↗

— Walter Pater

#aspires #condition #constantly #music #towards