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 BERENSONThe 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.
More Bernard Berenson Quotes
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[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.
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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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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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I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.
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Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.
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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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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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I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
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You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
BERNARD BERENSON








