Quotes by Bernard Berenson

“Miracles happen to those who believe in them.”

“All of the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater, must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man”

“Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.”

“I wish I could stand on a busy street corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours”

“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”

“Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope”

“All we really want is otherness, tossing from side to side, and greeting every toss with shouts of welcome, and of contempt for the previous toss”

“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”

“The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others”

“A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die”

“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.”

A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

I wonder whether Art has a higher function than to make me feel appreciate and enjoy natural objects for their art value?

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.

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?

We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against ones training.

Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.

I wish I could stand on a busy corner hat in hand and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.