Bernard Berenson Art Quotations

Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

All of the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater, must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man

I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?

No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art...our world would have remained a jungle.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.