Complete Works of Walter Pater Quotes

“Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. 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, Walter Pater: Complete Writings: The Renaissance, Marius The Epicurean, Imaginary Portraits, Plato and Platonism... (Bauer Classics)