Bernard Berenson Quotes
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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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Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.
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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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When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.
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No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art...our world would have remained a jungle.
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Pessimism like calumny is easy to do, and attracts immediate attention. The gossiper and the writer may find this out soon enough, and a little encouragement from the current mood will procure them successes that bring endless imitators in their trail. On the other hand saying good things about life in general and individuals in particular and making it interesting is a serious task which few can achieve with credit.
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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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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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It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I remember - I need not recall - that I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in Itness. I did not call it by that name. I had no need for words. It and I were one.
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I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival...each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday.
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Miracles happen to those who believe in them.
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One can repent even of having repented.
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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?
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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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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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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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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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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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Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.
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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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The Renaissance had resulted in the emancipation of the individual, in making him feel that the universe had no other purpose than his happiness. This brought an entirely new answer to the question, 'Why should I do this or that?' It used to be, 'Because self-instituted authority command you.' The answer now was, 'Because it is good for men.' In this lies our greatest debt to the Renaissance, that it instituted the welfare of men as the end of all action.
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Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
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The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.