The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.
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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I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.
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Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
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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.
BERNARD BERENSON -
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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Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one’s training.
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Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
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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.
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One can repent even of having repented.
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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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[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.
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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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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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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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I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?
BERNARD BERENSON






