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Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.
Bernard Berenson -
I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.
Bernard Berenson
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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.
Bernard Berenson -
Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.
Bernard Berenson -
Art, in the widest sense of the word, is the instrument Hellenism has used and would use for that purpose. All the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visual arts, the theatre, must work singly and together to create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, the free man.
Bernard Berenson -
A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.
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.
Bernard Berenson -
Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.
Bernard Berenson
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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 -
I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.
Bernard Berenson -
There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them.
Bernard Berenson -
Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
Bernard Berenson -
We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: "Too bad we can't get together more often".
Bernard Berenson -
I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
Bernard Berenson
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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?
Bernard Berenson -
Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.
Bernard Berenson -
Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.
Bernard Berenson -
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.
Bernard Berenson -
Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.
Bernard Berenson