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The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

John Berger

The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house.
JOHN BERGER

Country Doors Heart House Interior Two Unending
(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.
JOHN BERGER

Display Itself Nakedness Nudity Object Place Reveal Sight Stimulate
This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.
JOHN BERGER

Accept Callous Human Inhuman Know Live Society Worth
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Autobiography Begin Form Orphan Sense
To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.
JOHN BERGER

Anybody Closest Desire Feeling Immortal Life
Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.
JOHN BERGER

Blindness Chosen Come Dogma Fantacism Form Pursuit
The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
JOHN BERGER

Century Close Disappear Helpless Horizon Other People See
A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist’s own needs; a ‘finished’ statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work – related far more directly to the demands of communication.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Communication Drawing Finished Need Only Private Public Relate Statue Work
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGER

Event Given Name Need Occurred Story
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Age Believe City Every Nothing Sex Teenager
All creation is in the art of seeing.
JOHN BERGER

All Creation Art See
Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.
JOHN BERGER

Become Commodity Everything Exchangeable
Whenever the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing.
JOHN BERGER

Appearance Aware Become Certain Come Degree Degrees Energy Intense Intensity Look Scrutinizing Towards
Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.
JOHN BERGER

Capitalism Culture Dream Publicity Same Time

The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

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The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

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Popular Authors

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