Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. – 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
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
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. – Walter Pater