55 Quotes by Bernard Berenson

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

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.

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

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

We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man’s reason has never learned to separate them.

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

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.

Consistency, commonly thought of as a good thing, requires you to be as ignorant today as you wre a year ago.