Author & topic collection

Walter Pater Quotes About Thinking

Browse 6 quotations connecting Walter Pater with Thinking, with meanings, source notes and related themes.

All Walter Pater quotes Thinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & Judgment Sources Matching quotes

Sources

Where these thinking quotations appear

Sources represented here include The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Appreciations, with an Essay on Style.

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry1873 · 5 matching quotations Appreciations, with an Essay on Style1889 · 1 matching quotation

Find a word or source

Length

6 shown

Quotations

6 matching quotations with meanings and source context

Source identified1

all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects

Image design Golden Hour

Read & copy

“all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects”

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style · 1889

Meaning & context

Pater describes intellectual progress as learning to distinguish parts within what initially seems confused, a method that makes clearer categories and more exact judgment possible.

Source details

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Style,” printed page 5 in the standard Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. “all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation...” opens Pater’s argument by distinguishing prose, verse and poetry. This is literary-aesthetic criticism, not a modern experimental claim about cognition or learning.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Source identified2

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Image design Lavender

Read & copy

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873

Meaning & context

Pater uses music as his model for the closest possible union of form and content, a critical claim about artistic structure rather than a literal hierarchy of media.

Source details

The Renaissance, “The School of Giorgione”; Project Gutenberg #2398. The surrounding paragraph explains that other arts strive to reduce the separation between matter and form.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Source identified3

To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible

Image design Coastal

Read & copy

“To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible”

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873

Meaning & context

Pater begins aesthetic criticism by preferring close attention to particular works and experiences over a universal formula, making discrimination and concrete observation central to judgment.

Source details

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398, represented sixth-edition text. The phrase introduces Pater’s method of aesthetic criticism.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Source identified4

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.

Image design Midnight

Read & copy

“The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.”

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873

Meaning & context

Pater values philosophy for sharpening attention: its practical intellectual service is to make perception more alert rather than allowing experience to pass unnoticed through habit.

Source details

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The line belongs to Pater’s historically controversial conclusion on experience and culture.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Source identified5

What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy

Image design Coastal

Read & copy

“What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy”

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873

Meaning & context

Pater recommends intellectual openness and repeated testing rather than easy conformity, making revision and exposure to new impressions part of an active critical life.

Source details

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The sentence names Comte, Hegel and one’s own orthodoxy in its immediate continuation.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Source identified6

the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly.

Image design Lavender

Read & copy

“the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly.”

The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873

Meaning & context

Critical judgment begins with accurately noticing one’s own response before turning that response into a claim about the work, making self-observation part of disciplined interpretation.

Source details

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. Pater is describing aesthetic criticism, not claiming that personal impression alone settles every factual question.

↓ Download image (SVG)

Where these thinking quotations appear

6 matching quotations with meanings and source context

Other themes carried by these quotations

Other topic collections for Walter Pater