270 Quotes by John Berger

Happiness is not something to be pursued, it is something met, an encounter. Most encounters, however, have a sequel; this is their promise. The encounter with happiness has no sequel. All is there instantly. Happiness is what pierces grief.

It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.

The promise is that again and again from the garbage the scattered feathers the ashes and broken bodies something new and beautiful may be born.

Just after the Second World War Picasso bought a house in the South of France and paid for it with one still-life. Picasso has now in fact transcended the need for money. Whatever he wishes to own, he can acquire by drawing it. The truth has become a little like the fable of Midas.

If we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past.

Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.

Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.

Nature is energy and struggle. It is what exists without any promise. If it can be thought of by man as an arena, a setting, it has to be thought of as one which lends itself as much to evil as to good. Its energy is fearsomely indifferent.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.