Quotes from Bernard Berenson

You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.

Psychoanalysts are not occupied with the minds of their patients; they do not believe in the mind but in a cerebral intestine.

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

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

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

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

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

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

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

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

From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament... the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.

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.

I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.

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

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

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.

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

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.

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.