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

About Bernard Berenson

Bernard Berensonwas an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book The Drawings of the Florentine Painters was an international success.

More about the author

More quotes from Bernard Berenson

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)

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

Bernard Berenson

American art critic and collector (1865-1959)