Philip Gilbert Hamerton Quotes

• 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

  Lying, Inspiration, Practice

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.211

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, War, Sea

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.325

  8 Copy quote

• Culture is like wealth; it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Culture, Wealth

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1886). “Human Intercourse”

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Knowing, Mind

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• 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

  Wise, Attention, Pay

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.142

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Sweet, Spring, Winter

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1882). “The Sylvan Year: Leaves from the Note Book of Roaul Dubois. [Also The Unknown River. An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery]”

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• The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Strength, Exercise, Development And Growth

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.396

  7 Copy quote

• Never be afraid of What is good; the good is always the road to what is true.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Goodness

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1878). “Modern Frenchmen: Five Biographies”

  18 Copy quote

• Painting does not come from intelligence so much, as from sight and feeling and invention.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Sight, Feelings, Doe

  5 Copy quote

• The opinions of men who think are always growing and changing, like living children.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Life, Children, Men

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1873). “Thoughts about Art”, p.158

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

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Mistake, Inspiration, People

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• We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Summer, Exercise, Winter

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.324

  54 Copy quote

• Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Men, Able

  PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON (1878). “MODERN FRENCHMEN”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Friendship, Beautiful, Art

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.303

  4 Copy quote

• Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Work, Trying, Pleasure

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1886). “Human Intercourse”

  4 Copy quote

• People have prejudices against a nation in which they have no acquaintances.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  People, Prejudice, Acquaintance

  PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON (1878). “MODERN FRENCHMEN”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Sadness, Ideas, Tree

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1882). “The Sylvan Year: Leaves from the Note Book of Roaul Dubois. [Also The Unknown River. An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery]”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Fashion, People, Study

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.309

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Friends, Intellectual, Age

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.304

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Heart, Men

  6 Copy quote

• There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Cities, Water, Hart

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.433

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Cat, Anxiety, May

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Jules Jacques Veyrassat (1874). “Chapters on Animals”, p.48

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Military, Men, Solitude

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1886). “Human Intercourse”

  7 Copy quote

• Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Woe Unto, Solitude, Woe

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.324

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Distance, Men, Class

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1873). “The Intellectual Life: With a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, etched by Leopold Flameng”, p.328

  7 Copy quote

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