Bernard Berenson Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

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

[Describing his house:] It is a library with living rooms attached.

Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.

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.

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