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Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature

John Berger

What any true painting touches is an absence – an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.
JOHN BERGER

Absence Loss might Paint Painting Touch True Unaware
(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.
JOHN BERGER

Display Itself Nakedness Nudity Object Place Reveal Sight Stimulate
For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.
JOHN BERGER

Lot Me Out Paper Returning Take White
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Determine Effection Men Most Only Relation Relationship Themselves Wome
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama.
JOHN BERGER

Actor Art Before Both Bring Cinema Compare Drama Dramatix Nature Public Right Season
Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one’s self to be bored.
JOHN BERGER

Accustom Blessing Bored Chain Dog Sausage Self
Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the poetry I had read. So I lived for half a century until wordlessly we met. From my shirt on the back of the chair I learn tonight how many years of learning by heart I waited for you.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Carry Century Chair Clothes Heart Later Learn Like Live Poem Poet Read Want
The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.
JOHN BERGER

Cigarette Dialogue Noth Parentless Proscenium Shar Time
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGER

Female Herself Object Sight Surveyed Turn Vision Woman
To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.
JOHN BERGER

Anybody Closest Desire Feeling Immortal Life
Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
JOHN BERGER

Clash Color Cymbal Effect Lullaby Matisse Neither Together
You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.
JOHN BERGER

According Event Events Plan Plans
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
JOHN BERGER

Before Century Poverty Priorities Result Scarcity Set World
It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
JOHN BERGER

Basket Dog Dream Haire Like Open
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way
Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Born Distinguish Men Relationship Symbol Yet

Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature

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Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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