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One can repent even of having repented.

Bernard Berenson

As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.
BERNARD BERENSON

Deliberately Home Lying Myself
I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.
BERNARD BERENSON

Taster Tea Way Wine
Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.
BERNARD BERENSON

Appetite Satisfied Taste
From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament… the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.
BERNARD BERENSON

Childhood Dream Fatherhood
[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.
BERNARD BERENSON

House Library Rooms
I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?
BERNARD BERENSON

Appreciate Art Enjoy Value Wonder
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?
BERNARD BERENSON

Enemy Greater Interest Passion People
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.
BERNARD BERENSON

Healing Passion Sorrow Stress
Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.
BERNARD BERENSON

Art Government Momentary
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.
BERNARD BERENSON

Appointed Confidence Leisure Use
German 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.
BERNARD BERENSON

Country Degrees Giving Language Stones
I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
BERNARD BERENSON

Carpe Die Hands Time
The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.
BERNARD BERENSON

Average Country Feel Oppressing
I never felt that there was anything enviable in youth. I cannot recall that any of us, as youths, admired our condition to excess or had a desire to prolong it.
BERNARD BERENSON

Age Desire Excess
I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.
BERNARD BERENSON

Hands Life Minute Passerby Time Unused
Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
BERNARD BERENSON

Government Long Taxation

One can repent even of having repented.

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One can repent even of having repented.

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