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
Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. – Walter Pater
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. – Walter Pater
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