One can repent even of having repented.
BERNARD BERENSONGerman is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate.
More Bernard Berenson Quotes
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There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself.
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Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
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Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique – without which however it cannot exist at all.
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Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.
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Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her.
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I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?
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A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.
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Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.
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We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.
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Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
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Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed?
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Enemies could become the best companions. Companionship is based on a common interest, and the greater the interest the closer the companionship. What makes enemies of people, if not the eagerness, the passion for the same thing?
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No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art…our world would have remained a jungle.
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I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.
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Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.
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How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried.
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There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man’s reason has never learnt to separate them.
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The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity, rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows.
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It makes me happy to encounter goodness, love of work, humane intelligence, and people no matter at what kind of job, be it ever so humble, or ever so exalted, who do it well and con amore.
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From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament… the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.
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[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.
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Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
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When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.
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In figure painting, the type of all painting, I have endeavoured to set forth that the principal if not sole source of life enchantments are Tactile Values, Movement and Space Composition.
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The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.
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International affairs will be placed on a better footing when it is understood that there is no way of punishing a people for the crimes of its rulers.
BERNARD BERENSON