Walter Horatio Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was a distinguished 19th-century English essayist, art critic, and writer, best known for his influential work in aestheticism. Born in 1839, Pater's writings emphasized the pursuit of beauty and the significance of individual experience in art and literature. His notable work, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance," offered innovative perspectives on art critique, leaving a lasting impact on the aesthetic and literary movements of his time.
Book summaries for books written by Walter Horatio Pater
Quotes
Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
The ever-present conception of death cannot but warp and sterilize the whole soul.
Beauty then and the enjoyment of beauty is a science; and all art is capable of enlargement and of progress.
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.
The great thing, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
The only way to reach the ideal is by means of the senses.
The mere purport or content of a work of art is nothing but a stimulus to the imaginative activity.
The very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.
There will be little else left to do, but to look for new pleasures in the heavens, or to content ourselves with the old, to employ the mind upon the present, or speculate upon the future.
To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.
We are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death.