Philip Gilbert Hamerton Quotes & Sayings

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are still. If you will have a model or your living, take neither the stars, for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the river that cannot stay, but rather let your life be like that of the summer air, which has times of noble energy and times of perfect peace. It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on the breezy uplands; it works generously for the health and wealth of all men, yet it claims it hours of rest.. I have pushed the fleet, I have turned the mill, I have refreshed the city, and now though the captain may walk impatiently on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases me. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Fashion is nothing more than the temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal business to study the external elegance of life. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Never be afraid of What is good; the good is always the road to what is true. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The one mistake which is committed habitually by people who have the gift of half-genius, is waiting for inspiration. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The opinions of men who think are always growing and changing, like living children. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

People have prejudices against a nation in which they have no acquaintances. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author? — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Society is, and must be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest appearances, and not realities. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The only hope of preserving what is best, lies in the practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for opinions that are not ours. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Culture is like wealth; it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

You may have a cat in the room with you without anxiety about anything except eatables. The presence of a cat is positively soothing to a student. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

All that we have read and learned, all that has occupied and interested us in the thoughts and deeds of men abler or wiser than ourselves, constitutes at last a spiritual society of which we can never be deprived, for it rests in the heart and soul of the man who has acquired it. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton