The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it's something that theatre can do, but it's rare; it's very rare.
John BergerRead
It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books can gain relevance and freshness over time, even if their authors age.
This quote by John Berger suggests that while authors may age, the ideas and messages contained in their books can become increasingly significant or resonate more deeply with readers as time progresses. It highlights the notion that literature can transcend its original context, adapting and finding new meanings with each passing generation.
Themes
BooksLiteratureYouthTimelessnessRelevance
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion, one might quote this to emphasize how classics still touch modern readers.
More from John Berger
All quotes βUnlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
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We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
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Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
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Being a unique superpower undermines the military intelligence of strategy. To think strategically, one has to imagine oneself in the enemy's place. If one cannot do this, it is impossible to foresee, to take by surprise, to outflank. Misinterpreting an enemy can lead to defeat. This is how empires fall.
John BergerRead
Similar quotes
It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.
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Youβre supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, youβre not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.
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Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
You've only got 12 notes and however you mix them up is your thing.
Eddie Van HalenRead
After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights.
Leonardo Da VinciRead