Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.
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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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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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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Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
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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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Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.
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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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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?
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One can repent even of having repented.
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Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.
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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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There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man’s reason has never learnt to separate them.
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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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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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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