Walter Pater

I'm pretty sure that I found my new favorite author. Walter Pater is so elegant and profound. I was so excited when I read his 'conclusion from studies in the history of the renaissance' that I not only highlighted practically the entire excerpt, but also I read it to Jessi and called both my sister and mom to read them my favorite parts. Although both of them claim to be too stupid to understand what I talk about, they both thought it was pretty. Frustrated as I was with their lack of enthusiasm, my love is not squelched. The last paragraph is my favorite, so I will only quote that because it's rather lengthy.

"Victor Hugo says: we are all under the sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve... we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among 'the children of this world,' in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion- that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."

I think this is just perfectly said, and so clear that it really doesn't need explanation.