Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
BERNARD BERENSONI am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.
More Bernard Berenson Quotes
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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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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.
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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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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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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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Psychoanalysts are not occupied with the minds of their patients; they do not believe in the mind but in a cerebral intestine.
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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.
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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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Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.
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Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.
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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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[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.
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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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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.
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Miracles happen to those who believe in them.
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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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You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.
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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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One can repent even of having repented.
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I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.
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Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
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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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Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed?
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The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.
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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?
BERNARD BERENSON