Poet William Wordsworth’s term for scenes from nature that people can relive in order to help them gain perspective and overcome problems that they face in their daily lives (and particularly issues like frustrations over social status that are specifically tied to life in cities).
Spots of Time Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Spots of Time or refer to Spots of Time. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
What though the radiance which was so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8
Quotes
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”
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Spots of Time Term Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the term Spots of Time appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: On the Country and the City
...people “both a contrast to and relief from present difficulties,” and he called these scenes spots of time . This explains Wordsworth’s “unusually specific” subtitles, which usually name a location and an exact...
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De Botton had a “ spot of time ” too, when he and M. ate chocolate bars near Ambleside and he noticed a...
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...M. stayed, Wordsworth saw daffodils “dancing in the breeze” and kept them alive as a spot of time , writing: “For oft when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in...
(full context)