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.
BERNARD BERENSONNo artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art…our world would have remained a jungle.
More Bernard Berenson Quotes
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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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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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Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed?
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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. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her.
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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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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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Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
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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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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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Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.
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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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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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Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
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You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.
BERNARD BERENSON