Bernard Berenson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Miracles happen to those who believe in them.”