Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berensonwas an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book The Italian Painters of the Renaissance was an international success...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth26 June 1865
CountryUnited States of America
spring flower eye
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.
begging drop hat minutes stand street unused willingly
I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passers-by to drop their unused minutes into it.
passion people enemy
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?
hope despair cry
Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
summer morning air
It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I remember - I need not recall - that I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in Itness. I did not call it by that name. I had no need for words. It and I were one.
repent
One can repent even of having repented.
dream childhood fatherhood
From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament... the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.
stress passion healing
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.
space movement enchantment
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.
taste appetite satisfied
Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.
years play creative
Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed? How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried. There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself.
fate men two
There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them.
government long taxation
Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
history comparison
Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.