Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, was an English artist, art critic and author...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth10 September 1834
ideas interesting littles
Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots and the fitness of the little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers.
work trying pleasure
Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.
sadness ideas tree
I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness.
woe-unto solitude bears
Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.
military men solitude
As there is no pleasure in military life for a soldier who fears death, so there is no independence in civil existence for the man who has an overpowering dread of solitude.
powerful law society
Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.
friendship beautiful art
Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is, by these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age.
friends intellectual age
Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind, but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the tradition of the intellectual life.
art reading library
The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again.
light office france
Thackeray and Balzac will make it possible for our descendants to live over again the England and France of to-day. Seen in this light, the novelist has a higher office than merely and amuse his contemporaries.
distance men class
High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their class, and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and easily the common class-life around them. They seek the few companions who can understand them, and when these are not to be had within a traversable distance, they sit and work alone.
inspirational knowing mind
In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.
strength exercise development-and-growth
The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
war sea perfect
A perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone in the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to society, to have our place in it, and yet be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it.